Whenever my doctor asks me these kinds of questions I just answer with the "correct" answers. No way I'm flagging myself with issues.

It's all about profit margin.

Auto makers basically need to hit X dollars per car to keep the lights on, pay the wages, and hit the desired profit margin.

$25K cars are loss-leaders. They are designed to get young, first-time car buyers in the door and hope that brand loyalty will keep them buying their more expensive models later.

But my guess is most car manufacturers have decided they can't stomach a car that makes no profit. Why sell $25K cars when you can sell $40K cars?

That's pretty amazing. You are making not quite double my salary in Engineering.

Is it worth it?

>Trust me, you say you want all that, but once you get it, you'll be adding on more criteria such as something that is light and easy to carry around.

Anything would almost certainly be lighter than my bookbag full of books and notebooks.

>You can go onto eBay and buy something like what you say you want for less than $300 in the form of an XP tablet.

I will go and look into this.

Here's what I want:

I want an electronic device approximately 8.5 x 11 inches in size that I can write on with a stylus just like writing on paper.

I need to be able to store some PDF versions of textbooks on it also.

This device would give me one single thing to carry all my college text books and notebooks on.

I want this device to cost no more than $300.

>Really? You speak for "we"? Interesting. Arrogance
>aside, please describe one single thing that will make
>money from space.

I'm sure they asked the backers of all the colonial expeditions to the New World the same question. They came hoping to find gold. Instead they found everything else that made America wealthy.

Who knows what will be found in space that will be worth money. Hell, just the REAL ESTATE will be worth money, once people can reliably get there and back.

>Hmm, that's right, the few things that do make money
>from space don't involve people in space:
>communications satellites and recon satellites.

These are things that we know of TODAY that make money.

The rest of your post is just a complaint about the limitations of man's abilities TODAY. You speak as if they will never be overcome. Maybe they won't. But unless we TRY, they certainly won't be.

But all of this is beside my point, which is, man explores not for "no particular reason", but for a very specific reason - personal gain. Assuming we figure out how, man will go forth into space for the same reasons he has gone anywhere - looking for the greener grass on the other side of the fence.

>I pity you.
>
>Not only do you have a view of humanity that is culturally
>naive and bordering on shallow but you compound the
>problem by being incorrect.

I think you need to study some history then.

Man does not explore for "no particular reason". Man explores for personal gain.

We are going into space to make money. What it is that is going to make us money is as unknown to us as the wealth of America was known to Christopher Columbus. But we know that there is a high likelihood that something worth some money is going to be found.

And hell, it just might be fun.

There is a post above yours that says in order to launch an Apollo-type mission with lasers it would take all the power of the Hoover dam and then some, plus they would have to burn much longer than the 70 milliseconds or so they currently do.

As these things get cheaper and cheaper, maybe so. But then again, maybe not.

For years I have always purchased my own engineering calculators. I'm glad they are my personal property.

A few years ago I purchased my own 3D mouse for CAD work. I am glad I own it, also. They are so cheap that I can't imagine operating CAD software without one, regardless of whether the company would pay for one or not.

Computers may be approaching that cost level.

BUT

The problem is that computers must interface with the corporate network. They are going to want to control what software is on it, security settings, and the like. So you might own the hardware, but you may not have much control over it.

Plastic has the virtue of being non-conductive, but my guess is that such a tiny part made in plastic could be problematic in terms of strength.

I thought it was a pretty clear question:

Why would you buy a product where you have no control over what software you are allowed to run on it? It mystifies me.

I don't understand why people would buy closed computing products where you can't run whatever you want to run on them.

I buy the hardware. After that, I should be able to run whatever software I can buy that runs on it.

Who buys these things? They need to get off my lawn.

>What you describe is called being a Math Major.

In fact, when you're done with a BSCS you are very close to a math major.

But a lot of CS is about applied mathematics - how to use mathematics to efficiently solve computational problems.

>"computational science" or even "computational mathematics."

I like both of these better than my name. Good job.