As others have pointed out, this capability has already been embraced by higher education for certain coursework and certain students. It works well for professional certification activities, for instance, where mature students are pursuing specific aims. I took a graduate engineering course with full time students in the classroom and Raytheon engineers connecting via video from their own campus. Tests were remote, but lab exercises required they travel to the campus.

I have been responsible for remote observing capabilities at an astronomical observatory. Astronomers often take very large datasets using fancy cameras with numerous quirky controls. (The controls for the Hubble Space Telescope are at the Space Telescope Science Institute on Earth.) The technology for operating these remotely has been available for 20 years or more - especially given recent advances in network bandwidth. Except for certain niches, however, astronomers still choose to travel to remote mountaintops. There are the advantages of being physically present with the equipment and the staff - and there are also the logistical questions of NOT being present on your college campus and having to get up the following morning to teach your regular courseload.

Conferences are another similar situation. I've attended and been involved in organizing numerous conferences. The one next month is 14 timezones away. Hundreds of people will still make the trip because of the value of talking to people face-to-face, and especially the value of talking to many people simultaneously face-to-face. Video links are also terrible at providing lucky chances for unplanned conversations. I can't count the number of productive partnerships that have germinated over a stale lunch and a cold beer in between sessions.

Consider the Star Fleet Academy (or Hogwarts or the Isle of Roke). If ever there was a situation ripe for distance learning, that is it - and yet through several movies and TV series, book after book, the academy is depicted as a physical location shared by students from diverse planets - literally of every color... One might say that this is a failure of imagination of B-list sci-fi authors. It is perhaps more accurate to say that there is a requirement for a certain level of similar drama from the educational institutions that actually exist today.

The final point is that the business model demands that such distance learning evolves from the brick-and-mortar campuses, not from some entrepreneur with a limited vision. "Customers" (students and their parents) select colleges for many reasons. The expense and the awkwardness of travel are part of the positive factors involved in making the decision. For niche markets the customers will seek value based on brutal economic decisions. For most full-time undergrads, however, the adventure is the whole point. Not much adventure in a videogame education.

Thank you; very good information here; I didnt realize a station had to reply inside of the same frame. There IS therefore a timing issue but the BSS could counteract it obviously as you said by maintaining an additional frame offset internally. So this explains a 35km limit on GSM itself but do the 3g GSM technologies attempt to pack additional data in by shortening the guard period? If so that would explain a smaller distance limit, but I don't think data would be rejected; seems you'd just fall back to EDGE or GPRS?

I recently had to fire up an old Win98 box on a Compaq with a PIII inside, and man, it was rough. It was not unresponsive, but it was not exactly quick, and I had almost forgotten what hard drive thrashing sounded like. Plus the UI was just terrible, I used to love 98, but since I've been using XP for so long I can't figure out what I liked about it. Networking didn't make much sense, -every- little change required a reboot, and it just wasn't capable of fully integrating into a domain. Oh and it could not get DNS via DHCP, I was like, what?

Anyway, 98 would certainly run quicker on modern hardware, up until you hit multi-cores anyway. I don't recall since they were rare in consumer products back then, but I don't think 98 ever had very good multi-processor support. Poor handling of application processes was also an issue, that was actually one of the big selling poitns of XP, was that an application crash would rarely cause an OS crash. That was common for 98 and below.

As far as XP vs Vista's performance, the last I heard on the subject (it was a while ago) was Vista begins to outperform XP in raw speed once your system has more than 8 processors; XP does not scale as well as Vista (and Win7). That seems ridiculous now, but in a couple years it will probably be commonplace. You can get systems like that already.

Why not get a front bezel piece with the ports you want? My case didn't come with front ports, but now I've got 4 card readers and a USB port. Much better than the cheap crap they'll put on the front of a case.

Justice requires a juror to be impartial, and use only the facts of the case. Simple to deal with this situation: declare a mistrial, and/or hold Googling jurors in contempt of court, with the appropriate fines and jail time that come with that.

You wouldn't belive it, but all AoE appliances by www.coraid.com run plan9 internally.

I think this is in bit heaven.
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/harris/brochures/Harris_Systems_Brochure_Nov81.pdf

Orbitals are not real ! They are mathematical constructs and they are not observables. People think that just because you can calculate something it is real, that is not the case.

That a derived quantity is "just" a calculated approximate model of some part of the universe doesn't mean it isn't real. Forget about orbitals and quantum mechanics, consider planetary orbits and classical mechanics. There is no such thing as a closed elliptical orbit as depicted in the textbooks. All orbits are unclosed.

Physics IS building models. Models are real even if they are incomplete:

http://www.revell.com/catalog/products/buzz_aldrin_rocket_hero.html

It may not be Buzz, but it shares the quality of physical existence with him. (And Buzz is himself not the man he was on the Moon.) The absurdity of Moon-landing deniers lies in the fact that each and every one of us spends our entire life embedded in outer space. Where else would be be? The evolving Earth is far more special a place than just another desiccated Moon.

Why is the parent rated troll?

You're looking at this from the US perspective. In Russia, most of your list already exists:

Teachers Day: October 5
Medial Workers Day: Third Sunday of June
Social Workers Day: Second Sunday of June
Russian Science Day: February 8
Firemen's Day: April 30

In addition, Russia has commemorative days for public prosecutors, printed media, mass media, students, men, women, youth, mothers, tourists, elderly people, salesmen and service workers, police, geologists, cosmonauts, chemical industry workers, librarians, border guards, light industry workers, inventors, fishermen, postal workers, metallurgists, children's books, Slavic literature and culture, railroad workers, aviators, construction workers, miners, oil and gas workers, forestry workers, machinists and equipment workers, farmers, customs workers, automotive workers, security service workers, rescuers, power engineering specialists, and every concievable type of military workers.

Adding a Programmer's Day to this list is not particularly jarring or surprising.

-Graham

>>>If [battery and motor] were just useless weight, a Prius would get mileage similar to a typical gas car.

Bzzzz. You don't need they hybrid components to get decent mileage. The 45 highway MPG a Prius gets is not really any better than a 44MPG Honda Civic HX, which is not a hybrid. And even though they are no longer made, the old Suzuki Swifts were rated around 60MPG. And in the EU they make gasoline cars (Polos, Focuses) that also get around 60MPG.

Yes.

Besides starting out with a fully-charged battery every morning (which is like 40 miles of "free" energy when the gas engine will be turned-off), the overall fuel economy is only ~100 miles per gallon. That really isn't impressive.