You joke, but between the Canvas and Web Socket standards, I don't see any reason why they couldn't.

Granted, WebSockets have yet to be implemented in browsers, but I hear Google owns a fairly popular one...

wasnt that the whole point of XWindows?

Yes. But it failed to account for future advancements in graphics technology. Thus regular desktop usage became too heavyweight for wide deployment. Thin clients splintered in the directions of Citrix, NX, and VNC. Microsoft also screwed over Citrix and developed RDP.

NX basically is the X11 protocol with many of the issues that make it suck removed. This is accomplished through imperceptible delays to bunch up commands, compression of packets, and caching of previously executed series of commands.

XWindows was remote window graphics developed at Stanford and fortified at MIT during the 1980s.

X Windowing System, actually. X11 for short.

Read this:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html

Specifically, scroll down to the section "Enter the Web". After reading that, you should understand that it's not about keeping Internet Explorer dominant. It's about holding back the progress of the web.

Another source (in print):

http://www.amazon.com/Barbarians-Bill-Gates-Jennifer-Edstrom/dp/0805057544

I'm sorry, but this is just not true.

^ What is untrue is this statement. You offer it up with no backing as if we're supposed to accept it as reality. Well, it isn't. At least not anymore.

I've been observing non-technical users for a while now, trying to understand what it would take to make them switch. You know what I found? It just took critical mass. That was it. Over the past year, there's been a subtle shift in the way users treat alternative browsers.

Specifically, there's a huge amount of peer pressure *not* to use Internet Explorer! Just pop up in any chat room, forum, or other internet site and mention that you're using Internet Explorer. The responses used to be ambivalent. Now, you'll have just about everyone there descend on you and tell you which browser you should use!

Even in real life, I'm seeing the same trend. The message that "Internet Explorer == Viruses/Bugs/End of the World" seems to be percolating into the zeitgeist. Even the least technical of users tend to be very afraid of using IE and prefer to use FireFox or Safari whenever possible.

See, what you're espousing is the old wisdom. Something that used to be true, but no longer is. The reality of here and now is that the old wisdom is no longer true. For me, it took observing an event of an IE user finding it humorous that an HTML5 game didn't work in IE, and still getting pressed by those around him to explain why he would possibly be using such a POS as IE.

Open your eyes. I think you'll see much the same thing. The only thing propping up IE's market share at the moment is the IE6 "corporate standard" in many companies. Once that falls (and it WILL fall), IE is done for.

Oh, for crying out loud. The parent is NOT, I repeat NOT, flamebait.

Well, ok. Calling Carter a dolt was uncalled for, but so is saying the same of Bush. You see, the government has a bit of an unwritten rule around the pronunciation of "nuclear". It's a rule that was introduced for propaganda purposes, but hasn't always worked like they want it to.

Basically, government officials always pronounce the weapons as "nucular arsenal". This pronounciation is intended to associate the term with "bad", "danger", and "massive destruction". When they're referring to nuclear in the context of power generation or some other "good" aspect, it's supposed to be properly pronounced as "nuclear".

Of course, it didn't exactly work out as planned. The public sees no difference between "nucular" and "nuclear". Worse yet, the politicians often get the two mixed up anyway, thus failing at the message they're supposed to be delivering. But the concept is still out there and the Presidents have tried to somewhat follow it.

If you're interested in the origin of the use of "nucular" in the government, it goes back to Eisenhower. Eisenhower pushed a program known as "Atoms for Peace". Unfortunately, he couldn't pronounce "nuclear" correctly to save his life. As such, the term "nucular" ended up in the government lexicon.

Besides, there's a long tradition of never contradicting the President. Past or present. A tradition abused by the airforce to get the name of the RS-71 changed to SR-71. But that's another story... ;-)

It's not that Google can't or couldn't create a successful operating system... it's that for the vast majority of Windows users, they're not going to switch OS's.

If there's anything I've learned from the current browser war, it's that the best way to take down Microsoft is not another monopoly, but healthy competition.

i.e. FireFox has done a bang-up job in being a strong competitor to Internet Explorer. Yet it remained fairly niche until Safari, Opera, and Chrome all worked there way into people's lives.
They're all still niches in of themselves, but they add up to a whole that presents a serious competition to Microsoft. Worse yet, they've captured enough marketshare to where the idea of IE being the "only option" has mostly gone the way of the dodo.

Competition for Windows will need to be the same. No one Operating System will dethrone it. Not Linux, not OS X, not Google Chrome OS. But together, in competition, they can become more than the sum of their parts.

Aren't nuclear reactors kind of heavy

Yes. Though most of it is shielding which doesn't need to be installed near the rear of the vessel. Turbines are surprisingly compact and are not as heavy as one might assume. Same with the nuclear core.

and full of moving parts that break?

No. Or more precisely, "not exactly". Nuclear reactors generate heat. How you translate that heat into electricity is where your moving parts tend to come into play. Using a working fluid like helium combined with a Brayton cycle turbine is efficient, well tested, and highly reliable.

Some serious engineering is going to have to go into making the power source light enough

NASA already did the work for a probe called Prometheus. While Prometheus was scrapped to make budget room for the Moon return plan, the reactor designs should still be on file. There might need to be more development done to scale the reactor upwards, but it's not brand new engineering.

I have a problem where my X-server grows to over a gig of RAM even when all windows have been closed.

You do realize that X memmaps the video memory into its memory space? This gives it some rather crazy numbers for RAM usage even when it's running thin. Especially with modern cards having 512MB of video mem or more.

Otherwise I do not disagree with your general statements. :-)

No kidding. But this engine is able to take large amounts of energy and impart it into very little matter. 200 kW per engine for 5 newtons of thrust to be specific. At an Isp ranging from 3,000 to 30,000 seconds, it needs very little reaction mass to operate. But to sustain that much power, it needs a nuclear generator. And if you're going to pay for the weight to generate 200 kW, you might as well pay to generate a megawatt or more. You'll need to carry more nuclear fuel and reaction mass, but the high efficiency means that the reaction mass will be a relatively small mass penalty. The nuclear fuel is already pellet sized, so that's the least of your concerns.

Follow? Good.

I'm trying really hard to come up with an appropriate response to that. Unfortunately, you have left me speechless and dumbfounded. Maybe some day I'll even understand what the point was you were trying to make.

Thanks for the excellent post! But there's one minor detail I'd like to inject here:

If you're going to pay the weight cost for a nuclear reactor (which is the only technology that can feasibly produce that much energy for sustained periods), you might as well attach more engines to it. This will give you far more thrust for the journey as well as spread the weight cost of the reactor across many engines. And since much of the cost of the reactor is fixed (e.g. You've got to shield the thing from the crew) installing a higher output version should not add significant weight to the vessel.

I'll grant you that you'll need more fuel for more engines, but part of the point here is that these engines are extremely fuel efficient. So the additional fuel cost should not be unreasonably for the additional engines.

The problem with speeding up is that you eventually have to slow down, and slowing down takes plenty of energy and time too.

When you have constant thrust, this is an easy to solve problem. You speed up until you reach the halfway point. Then you turn the ship around and begin thrusting the opposite direction for the second half of the journey. Assuming sufficient constant thrust, you'll still get to your destination faster than the yahoos attempting a low-energy transfer.

As a bonus, thrusting forward and thrusting backwards are exactly the same from a relativity perspective. Which means that you'll get artificial gravity for the entire journey.

Also, when building up to this insanely fast speed, what are they planning to do if some random debris gets in their path?

At such a small fraction of c, there's no difference between a fast ship or a slow ship. Meteorites could be moving toward you at high speeds no matter what your speed is relative to Mars and Earth. The velocity imparted on the spacecraft only becomes a concern when the speed imparted on the craft is enough to move interstellar distances. At those speeds (relative to stars), the various materials floating around are going to be much slower than the craft because they're aligned to the gravitational forces of the surrounding stars and galaxies while you're moving against that flow like a bat outta hell. ;-)

Gas Core Nuclear Thermal Rockets are still science fiction. No one has yet built the necessary components, and there is a great deal of argument over whether or not "nuclear light bulbs" are even possible.

I'd love to see a 3,000 - 5,000 second NTR engine as well, but it would still be better suited for liftoff. For interplanetary travel, you simply can't beat the efficiency numbers of VASMIR. They start at the theoretical limits of NTRs!

these numbers are from the 60s

I don't have the reference in front of me, but I seem to recall that solid core NTRs were brought as high as 1200 seconds. On paper, anyway. No one has built them since the 80's timberwind project.

You're partially correct. But only partially. While you generally need to wait for proper alignment to make your journey, the length of the journey is still dependent on how fast you go. Chemical rockets are so slow that we need to begin the orbital transfer ~260 days before the expected orbital intersection with Mars. With more acceleration, the ship could leave later and still make the rendezvous.

Ok, that's horribly simplified. But I simply don't have the time to look up and explain the myriad of orbital transfers available. Suffice it to say, a little bit of extra speed won't help much at all. A lot of extra speed will open up many more options.

Or in other words, how fast you get somewhere depends on how much energy you want to waste to accomplish that goal.

Try looking at the specific impulse on those. ~800-1000 seconds. Now compare to 3,000-30,000 seconds. Which one is more efficient with its fuel?

NTRs are very, very cool. But they're very wasteful with the energy produced by the reactor. Potentially great for liftoff (if anyone ever building a modern variant without the graphite flaking problems), but nowhere near as useful for interplanetary travel as the VASMIR engines are promising.