Dude. Please go and speak to a game developer about the screwed up graphics driver nightmare under windows.

Then realise that the same exists on Linux.

A lot of effort goes into the Windows + (all the different versions of graphics drivers out there) nightmare. Linux would at _least_ be that kind of screwed up to maintain. That's a lot of manpower for no specific revenue targets. No PHB is going to agree to that.

Now if Linux had a sane, stable graphics environment that provided the same experience on all platforms.. everything would be sweet. But PCs don't let you get away with that.

.. for one generation.

Problem - 60GHz is currently very near-space wifi. It's also what, a couple of gigabit worth of bandwidth. Also, I haven't seen any studies yet looking at 60GHz saturation and lots of multi-path reflection. It's a cool technology but it does read like someone's trying to sell the tech, rather than really being suitable for it.

Yes, because lots of old cars is a great way to keep your car economy going. I like second hand cars (and I spent my first 12 driving years driving them) but it doesn't create a sustainable manufacturing economy.

Because there's significant signal processing going on with the received signals. And they're different based on the different ages of the spacecraft.

I suggest doing a little digging into what JPL and NASA do on the receive side.

... also, that was for spirit and opportunity.

Curiousity is different:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_rover

"Curiosity can communicate with Earth directly at speeds up to 32 kbit/s, but the bulk of the data transfer should be relayed through the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Odyssey orbiter. Data transfer speeds between Curiosity and each orbiter may reach 2 Mbit/s and 256 kbit/s, respectively, but each orbiter is only able to communicate with Curiosity for about eight minutes per day.[32]"

and [32] is:

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/communicationwithearth/data/

"The data rate direct-to-Earth varies from about 500 bits per second to 32,000 bits per second (roughly half as fast as a standard home modem). The data rate to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is selected automatically and continuously during communications and can be as high as 2 million bits per second. The data rate to the Odyssey orbiter is a selectable 128,000 or 256,000 bits per second (4-8 times faster than a home modem)."

So the rover can communicate with MRO a lot quicker than a modem. The limit now is the uplink back through the DSN.

And that's a single Mars uplink. And there's a lot of data processing on the receive side of the deep space network. It's not just a normal modem.

Maybe a bunch of orbiting deep space network telescope antennas? Well, they're very _big_. Likely bigger than any single dish that we've attached to something in space before.

Besides, it would be good to get experience with this kind of stuff..

Really? Do you know what the uplink rate from the rover actually is? Hint. it's not 9600bps anymore.

So now you know that in 4 years time, the minimum fund raising you need to do in your area is $100,000.

Good luck!

That would still be really nice to have online!

.. can we please have those scrapbooks scanned and placed online? pretty please?

.. i'd assume that whatever they were firing would have some kind of guidance control.

It's 2012. Why would you create a dumb ballistic projectile over that kind of distance?

Running in your own direction with open source is only as good as your team of trained monkeys is at keeping things reintegrated with upstream.

It's not "free".

.. wow. [citation needed] and context required please.

Because you don't live in a world where individuals' actions have no effect outside of the individual.

If two people decide to get in the ring and box, and suffer brain damage in the long term, so be it. What effect could it have?

If a hundred thousand pairs of people decide to get in the ring and box, what kind of long term effects will that have on the people around them? Would there be an increase in accidents? A decrease in critical thinking? What kind of effects would it have on their planning and execution skills? What about those families whose fathers/mothers/daughters/sons are suffering from boxing effects and what stresses/effects does it have on them?

Done at a large enough scale, _everything_ has an influence on society as a whole.