Either is going to be a heck of a lot more expensive than manufacturing them on earth and shipping them to central Australia, say.
Actually, we should be able to get the cost per kilogram of shipping from the Moon down pretty low. We know there's silica there; use a mass driver to get chunks of rock into Lunar orbit, then move them to the Lagrange points.
We would want to research more efficient methods of collecting solar energy in space, certainly. But O'Neill thought this was doable in the late 70s.
As fortune would have it,/. posted this the day after my post -- further discussion of the same idea.
Get us their permanently, with O'Neill colonies in the L4 and L5 points. Beam collected solar energy to collectors on Earth, and solve the energy problem. Move from internal combustion to fuel cells with the collected energy. Clean up the sky.
Then start thinking space elevator. Once we've done that, we can start thinking about getting off this rock.
As far as PSO goes - it has also been announced for Xbox, and possibly PS2. Among the broadband community, it looks like Xbox has the best online strategy. For those who want to use only modems, its a toss up between PS2 and GC.
Gee, I thought I was pretty in the loop. PSO for XBox? I'm rethinking my future purchase plans. I want to play the next Resident Evil game too, though...and I keep hearing such great things about ICO...Dammit! I want a universal console!
Are the sports games going to XBox? I hadn't seen that announced yet.
GameCube was getting:
-Super Monkey Ball (looks pretty cool)
-a port of Phantasy Star Online.
Well first of all, PSO is a tour de force, so that's a pretty big deal. If Nintendo gets its networking solution together, it's going to inherit the PSO community and have a chance to addict a much larger number of players to the joys of console MMORPGs.
But second, Gamecube is also getting Sonic, and that's going to be really cool. In the Dreamcast version, you could raise Chaos on the VMU, which was moderately amusing; on the Gamecube, you'll be able to raise the Chaos on the GBA. This will not only be better(I didn't like carrying a VMU around, because I didn't want to lose it and lose all my saved games) but it will let Nintendo leverage Sonic to sell GBAs.
Sega's had several very pretty, well-developed games for both the Saturn and the Dreamcast that it allowed to die on the vine before they came here.
Well, Sega is pretty far from being the only Japanese gaming company guilty of this. Capcom comes to mind. Luckily, some enterprising souls in the Pacific Northwest have come up with a permanent solution.
Go to the Nintendo GameCube website [nintendogamecube.com] and check out the CubeClubs.
Well, there isn't one in my city. The reason I was thinking Gamecube was the previews of anticipated titles I've seen: new Resident Evil, new Zelda, Soul Kalibur sequel, etc. Already I think they've gotten away from the "kids only" thing that plagued the N64.
But I go where the games are. I had no intention of buying a Dreamcast until the first time I played the original Soul Kalibur. I'm not sick of my little baby yet; maybe next year, I'll do some comparison shopping of the consoles that are out there and see how things stand then.
You forget, the Japanese arcade market is doing fine.
Ooooh, good point. And I'll bet Sega of Japan is wagering that XBox won't be a big seller in Japan...suddenly, they have all these arcade games that most Japanese residents can't play at home.
The reason to do this is so that Sega can move games from arcade to XBox or vice-versa, right? So I think, reading this, you have to expect that Sega intends to do a lot of development on XBox. Currently they are supporting all three consoles by their former rivals, but most of the interesting stuff was going to PS2 and Gamecube. Until Friday, when it was announced that Shenmue II was cancelled in the US on Dreamcast and would be exclusive to the XBox.
I would reluctantly guess that we can expect to see more of Sega's best stuff on XBox. I am of two minds about this, because it will tempt me to buy an XBox, and I already wanted a Gamecube.
Sega the company, especially Sega of America, I have very little respect for. The release pattern for Sega games on the American consoles Sega's put out since the Genesis has been both Broken and Wrong.
And this is what you play video games for? The marketing department of the company that releases them? If Nintendo's marketing in the late 80s had sucked, would you have eschewed Zelda, Mario, and Metroid?
Sega is a game company. They make brilliant games. They've made some marketing missteps, but just as many of their financial problems were due to the fact that they've been fighting off juggernauts during the entire duration of their time in the home console business -- first Nintendo, then Sony.
Instant photography was terrible quality and was good for two things: documenting car accidents, and taking naked pictures of your girlfriend.
Man, that brings back memories. I worked in a volume photoprocessing plant for a few years, and you'd be surprised how many people didn't bother with buying the Polaroid before taking the naked pictures. I guess they didn't feel too shy about giving us photo gnomes a little treat.
Why you wanna send "Tiny Tarzan" to prison? Cousan ain't done nuttin' wrong, neg...
Well, no. The shame of it is that he probably hasn't broken the law, even after taking money from telcos and then writing and pushing for legislation that will greatly benefit them.
As far as I'm concerned, he's openly corrupt, though. If you wish to vote for a corrupt politician, I suppose it's your perogative. It's not like this sort of thing doesn't have quite a pedigree in Louisiana anyway(think Huey Long).
This whole problem is caused by the fact that the local carriers (Verison, etc.) are government monopolies.
Well, they're privately owned monopolies. They're not owned by the government. In Europe, the telephone company is frequently owned by the government.
The situation in the states results in the kind of half-assed free market system we so often get in the US, where, as Gore Vidal put it, we have socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor.
There is little open source software for windows, because authors of open source software do not want to support microsoft.
Sorry, this is false. I run Windows 2000, primarily because this is the sole machine that both my girlfriend and I use, and she is not comfortable with Linux desktop environments. OSS I have installed right now? Putty, GNU Emacs, bash(under Cygwin), BitchX, and an IDE based on mingw32 that utilizes ports of gcc and gdb.
I have run the Gimp on Windows, but that's actually kind of jarring; GTK look and feel just smacked down in the middle of everything else. I probably would have gotten used to it eventually, though.
This is not from the formerly state-owned telco - their deal is 512kbits, dunamic IP, for around $30.
Which is still pretty damned good. I've been telling people that the state of DSL in Europe represented a failure big, goverment-supported monopolies to provide a necessary service, and that it was very embarassing for a leftist like me.:-) Now, what I seem to be finding out is that the DSL failures in Europe were greatly overstated, and that it's the "free" market system we have here that's failed us. Again.
They are nowhere near as good as yours though, probably cos France Telecom is still a state controlled monolith monopoly.
How about availability? Urban areas only, rural areas, what? If the availability is good, then you've just made a pretty good case for "state controlled monolith monopol[ies]."
And is the telco in Sweden a state-run enterprise?
Here's an interesting little impromptu poll. Can you get DSL? How much is it? And is your telco owned privately or by the government?
Let's figure out how bad these state-run monopolies really are.
The problem in the US is badly managed telecom companies trying to revive their business using a silver bullet called
DSL.
I would more properly say that US telecoms essentially believe they deserve a government-issued license to print money, with no restrictions on their behavior. Thanks to some well-planned campaign contributions, they essentially get one.
I have a dream. A dream that Congressman Billy Tauzin will go to prison...
I get ADSL (500Kbits out, 2.5Mbits in), static IP, allowed to set up any server for non-commercial use and no cap, for $25 a month. Other offers in
Sweden - while not quite as good - are comparative to this.
Wow! What are your immigration laws like? I am already a democratic socialist, if that helps...:-)
File-sharing is here to stay, and it's the driving force behind broadband.
Yes. Yes! And what's even better about that? As soon as you get into hardcore file-sharing, your computer seems too slow(to play DivXs/rip MP3s) and your hard drive seems too small! So you start upgrading!
What if the government had kept the ILECs from crushing their enemies and dragging their feet on DSL? Would people still be buying computers? Would that have taken a little bit of the sting out of the current downturn?
Perhaps that should read
Broadband in the USA is Dead....
Yeah, I noticed that too, but everything I've read about other countries(primarily the European Union) suggests that broadband there is mostly DSL, mostly too expensive, and not widely offered.
From The Register:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/21655.html
That's on Irish ADSL costing 61 pounds(about $88.55 at today's rates) a month, with a 3 gig/month usage cap. Ouch, huh?
Broadband will always be available, the market just won't be so damn saturated as it was.
Is the market saturated, though? There are plenty of people who want broadband and can't get it. And how many people are providing broadband in the States? (Notice that that's the sole focus of Cringely's column.) Covad, Roadrunner, @home, and the ILECs are all that's left, right? With @home fading fast.
To show appreciation for NY in light of 9/11, I went ahead and signed up for the free subscription to NYT the week after it happened, and stopped avoiding logging in.
What a strong act of appreciation for New York -- to sign up for a free service that way!
His job is to question where and how public money is being spend.
Perhaps he could spend a couple of bucks on making sure the public schools teach verb tenses?
Disclaimer: This is a completely unfair comment, as I have no way of knowing where mimbleton was educated. Any flamers should bear in mind that I acknowledge this simple fact, and am just being a smartass.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, we should be able to get the cost per kilogram of shipping from the Moon down pretty low. We know there's silica there; use a mass driver to get chunks of rock into Lunar orbit, then move them to the Lagrange points.
We would want to research more efficient methods of collecting solar energy in space, certainly. But O'Neill thought this was doable in the late 70s. As fortune would have it, /. posted this the day after my post -- further discussion of the same idea.
Then start thinking space elevator. Once we've done that, we can start thinking about getting off this rock.
Then the future is here.
Gee, I thought I was pretty in the loop. PSO for XBox? I'm rethinking my future purchase plans. I want to play the next Resident Evil game too, though...and I keep hearing such great things about ICO...Dammit! I want a universal console!
Are the sports games going to XBox? I hadn't seen that announced yet.
Well first of all, PSO is a tour de force, so that's a pretty big deal. If Nintendo gets its networking solution together, it's going to inherit the PSO community and have a chance to addict a much larger number of players to the joys of console MMORPGs.But second, Gamecube is also getting Sonic, and that's going to be really cool. In the Dreamcast version, you could raise Chaos on the VMU, which was moderately amusing; on the Gamecube, you'll be able to raise the Chaos on the GBA. This will not only be better(I didn't like carrying a VMU around, because I didn't want to lose it and lose all my saved games) but it will let Nintendo leverage Sonic to sell GBAs.
Well, Sega is pretty far from being the only Japanese gaming company guilty of this. Capcom comes to mind. Luckily, some enterprising souls in the Pacific Northwest have come up with a permanent solution.
Well, there isn't one in my city. The reason I was thinking Gamecube was the previews of anticipated titles I've seen: new Resident Evil, new Zelda, Soul Kalibur sequel, etc. Already I think they've gotten away from the "kids only" thing that plagued the N64.
But I go where the games are. I had no intention of buying a Dreamcast until the first time I played the original Soul Kalibur. I'm not sick of my little baby yet; maybe next year, I'll do some comparison shopping of the consoles that are out there and see how things stand then.
I would reluctantly guess that we can expect to see more of Sega's best stuff on XBox. I am of two minds about this, because it will tempt me to buy an XBox, and I already wanted a Gamecube.
And this is what you play video games for? The marketing department of the company that releases them? If Nintendo's marketing in the late 80s had sucked, would you have eschewed Zelda, Mario, and Metroid?
Sega is a game company. They make brilliant games. They've made some marketing missteps, but just as many of their financial problems were due to the fact that they've been fighting off juggernauts during the entire duration of their time in the home console business -- first Nintendo, then Sony.
John Coltrane is up to 120 RPM in his grave.
Man, that brings back memories. I worked in a volume photoprocessing plant for a few years, and you'd be surprised how many people didn't bother with buying the Polaroid before taking the naked pictures. I guess they didn't feel too shy about giving us photo gnomes a little treat.
Well, no. The shame of it is that he probably hasn't broken the law, even after taking money from telcos and then writing and pushing for legislation that will greatly benefit them.
As far as I'm concerned, he's openly corrupt, though. If you wish to vote for a corrupt politician, I suppose it's your perogative. It's not like this sort of thing doesn't have quite a pedigree in Louisiana anyway(think Huey Long).
I should *really* update that whole fucking page...
Well, they're privately owned monopolies. They're not owned by the government. In Europe, the telephone company is frequently owned by the government.
The situation in the states results in the kind of half-assed free market system we so often get in the US, where, as Gore Vidal put it, we have socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor.
Sorry, this is false. I run Windows 2000, primarily because this is the sole machine that both my girlfriend and I use, and she is not comfortable with Linux desktop environments. OSS I have installed right now? Putty, GNU Emacs, bash(under Cygwin), BitchX, and an IDE based on mingw32 that utilizes ports of gcc and gdb.
I have run the Gimp on Windows, but that's actually kind of jarring; GTK look and feel just smacked down in the middle of everything else. I probably would have gotten used to it eventually, though.
Which is still pretty damned good. I've been telling people that the state of DSL in Europe represented a failure big, goverment-supported monopolies to provide a necessary service, and that it was very embarassing for a leftist like me. :-) Now, what I seem to be finding out is that the DSL failures in Europe were greatly overstated, and that it's the "free" market system we have here that's failed us. Again.
How about availability? Urban areas only, rural areas, what? If the availability is good, then you've just made a pretty good case for "state controlled monolith monopol[ies]."
And is the telco in Sweden a state-run enterprise?
Here's an interesting little impromptu poll. Can you get DSL? How much is it? And is your telco owned privately or by the government?
Let's figure out how bad these state-run monopolies really are.
I would more properly say that US telecoms essentially believe they deserve a government-issued license to print money, with no restrictions on their behavior. Thanks to some well-planned campaign contributions, they essentially get one.
I have a dream. A dream that Congressman Billy Tauzin will go to prison...
Yes. Yes! And what's even better about that? As soon as you get into hardcore file-sharing, your computer seems too slow(to play DivXs/rip MP3s) and your hard drive seems too small! So you start upgrading!
What if the government had kept the ILECs from crushing their enemies and dragging their feet on DSL? Would people still be buying computers? Would that have taken a little bit of the sting out of the current downturn?
From The Register:5 .html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/2165
That's on Irish ADSL costing 61 pounds(about $88.55 at today's rates) a month, with a 3 gig/month usage cap. Ouch, huh?
To show appreciation for NY in light of 9/11, I went ahead and signed up for the free subscription to NYT the week after it happened, and stopped avoiding logging in.
What a strong act of appreciation for New York -- to sign up for a free service that way!
Truly, it was the least you could do.
How is your German or Russian ?
Ya mogoo govoreet po-Rooski horosho, aber meine Deutsche ist nicht gut.
And you didn't read my disclaimer, either.
Perhaps he could spend a couple of bucks on making sure the public schools teach verb tenses?
Disclaimer: This is a completely unfair comment, as I have no way of knowing where mimbleton was educated. Any flamers should bear in mind that I acknowledge this simple fact, and am just being a smartass.