Comment: Re:It's a good thing the military is still funded. (Score 1) 418
My point is the flip is about to occur. More people will be riding the train then shoveling the coal. And those freeloaders vote.
Yeah, like votes still count for anything...
My point is the flip is about to occur. More people will be riding the train then shoveling the coal. And those freeloaders vote.
Yeah, like votes still count for anything...
...are afraid to fix the fucked-up tax code where 46% pay no income tax at all.
You realize that those 46% still pay lots of other kinds of taxes? E.g. sales taxes, excise taxes, property taxes (latently, through their rent - surely the landlord passes on his property taxes to his tenants), etc. The idea that half of Americans don't pay taxes is a detestable myth/propaganda.
My greatest fear with brain enhancement technology is that it creates a super-class of humans. Those who have the ability to pay for the technology will have a majorly unfair advantage against those who don't, creating a dangerously elite group of people.
Substitute "brain enhancement technology" with "smartphones", "personal computers", "automobiles", "airplanes", "telegraphs", "printed books", "arithmetic" etc. All technologies that confer some advantage are generally more readily available, and sooner, to people with money than to people without. (The funny thing is, I don't know if I'm making an argument that technology is a rising tide that lifts all boats, or that technology and its superior availability to the wealthy is a proof that trickle-down really works...)
A phased array antenna, however, has LOTS of moving parts that can break or freeze up in bad weather. It also costs anywhere between $5000 and $30000 depending on your specifics, especially given that you need to bump up the transmitter power vs. an equivalent GEO radio to get equivalent data rates. Top that off with the fact that you're going to lose your connection everytime the LEO bird your dish was tracking goes over the horizon and it needs to lock onto a different satellite.
What about a solid-state phased array, like them newfangled AESA radars? I guess they're a little more than $5k-$30k though...
I wonder why they aren't putting network satellites in LEO instead of geostationary. Just how hard would it be to use a phased array antenna instead of a dish and track the orbit? Would that negate the lower cost of only going to LEO? After all, with the satellites in lower orbit you could launch more of them, which ought to improve bandwidth. And the improvement in latency would make this arrangement competetive with any other broadband offering.
I have had this exact thought from time to time in the past - pretty much ever since I first heard of phased-array antennae. I can only imagine that the cost/benefit equation works out negatively. Remember, not only is the phased-array antenna (which I guess would look something like an AESA radar) technology fairly expensive (and possibly somewhat secret, for anything reasonably compact), but you need lots more satellites. For GEO, you could hypothetically get away with maybe 6 satellites (and you'd still have trouble near the poles), whereas with LEO you might need 20 or more (cf. GPS), depending on the orbital altitude.
That's because both politicians AND industrialists just see lots of fast profit from permafrost thawing, namely more usable land
Are you kidding? Do you know what happens to permafrost when it thaws? It becomes an impassable, goopy muck that you can't build on, or drive on, or lay railroad tracks on, etc. Homes and buildings in the regions permafrost zone are built on pilings sunk way down into the portion of the permafrost that's cold enough to never thaw, so that the buildings don't sink into the muck. I'm not sure where the "fast profit" is in working in that kind of terrain.
NT was going to be ported to everything. MIPS, DEC Alpha (No love for you VAX people), and the IBM Mainframe. It made it onto the Alpha, I think. Sort of. Now Windows is brought in to the mainframe, but not as a conqueror displacing System/360. It is brought in wearing chains, in a cage, by System/360's grandson.
IIRC it was officially available at one point or another for Alpha and MIPS R4000. A PowerPC port (for IBM PPC machines, not Macs) was in the works but I'm not sure it was ever released...? Of course, if you count NT-derived OSes that came after the one actually called "Windows NT", then there's also Itanium, and soon to be ARM.
Prepare for tomorrow -- get ready. -- Edith Keeler, "The City On the Edge of Forever", stardate unknown