slightly off-topic, but relevant for the future of this technology.
I love Sci-Fi novels such as Peter Hamilton's "Reality Dysfunction" where an AI does the function of all local and central government in a habitat for no personal gain and every single person is connected to it real time on a personal basis.
The day we can move from the slimy self preserving low-life which seems to inhabit this space now will be a better day for everyone.
About as close as we are to having election laws changed in the U.S. so that a third-party candidate would actually have a chance -- not close at all. The existence of a better/fairer alternative is irrelevant if the "slimy self preserving low-lifes" have enough power to keep themselves in power.
Why was this down-voted? I agree with the poster, and as far as I see, I wake up and everyone's clock is 1 second wrong, why precisely should I give a frig about this and how is the world going to end or change due to the clock going from :59 to :00 instead of :60 or anything being a second out?
Picture yourself riding an elevator in a tall office building, when the clock strikes midnight. The elevator controller has its time synced via posix time. The controller schedules when to stop running the elevator motor by reckoning from its last known position and projecting forward according to its estimated speed. Normally this calculation is performed 10 times a second so it's a smooth transition.
But when the clock jumps back abruptly by 1.0 s, the controller gets confused. Its next control loop update cycle is now scheduled 1100 ms into the future instead of the normal 100 ms period. This delays the motor shutdown signal and even causes the controller to miss the top-of-position sensor. The elevator car slams into the roof of the building. The cable snaps and all passengers contemplate Einstein for 10 s as the elevator car freefalls to their certain doom.
Well they would have, except that cable elevators have had mechanical safeties for a backup system since the 19th century.
OK, so instead:
Picture yourself receiving life-saving radiation therapy, when the clock strikes midnight ...
Millions of Chinese students have or will have done engineering and science at the degree level, that combined with the Chinese business acumen will almost certainly ensure them both designing and building the things we require in the future.
The USA will however have plenty of patent lawyers to ensure they are all sued if they try to get too clever.
For what it's worth, it's not "Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light" so much as "Moving faster than light is a concept which makes no sense physically."
I don't know from what background you're making that statement but in general it's good for people to know that E=mc^2 only when the object is at rest, otherwise you must account for momentum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalence...
Why would there be any fragmentation? You're running the web on it...the web is architecture agnostic. This is why it never really made sense for me why they went with Intel and x86, when they could've started from day one on ARM. They are not bound by legacy software on a specific architecture, like Windows is with x86.
I am one of those people who have been "corn-holed" over the last 30 years and I seriously don't care how many publishers or retail outlets I put out of business by buying electronically.
The Internet selling model is here to stay and as long as the artist or author gets their fair cut for creating the work, the model is fine by me. The fact this author is tied to his publisher is between him and the publisher and not my problem.
I've read some rubbish by established authors with ridiculous e-book prices and some fine stuff for $0.99 by authors quite happy with the e-book format, Amazon does not need to apologise to anyone IMHO in fact I'm preparing my first book for publication with them later this year, I doubt I will make much but I have a day job and the Karma value will be immense, I suspect this is the feeling of a lot of authors (yes there is a lot of shit ebooks to wade through but its worth it when you find a gem!)
If there isnt an ebook and the price is too high I go to the library or dont read it (seriously how many people would seriously read a photocopied book)
I'm preparing my first book for publication with them later this year, I doubt I will make much but I have a day job
I've been working with an author-run e-publishing group for the past few months, and this is an attitude I see a lot. I understand where it comes from, but it's not really good for readers or the literary ecosystem. Amazon has no real stake in any of the books they publish. They own the platform that sells all of the content, so as long as they're selling something, they're fine. There are no publishers giving books the criticism and support they need, and no passionate booksellers to promote them to readers. If even the authors don't care if a book sells, where does that leave us? I don't know. But I'm going to keep buying traditionally published books until someone figures it out.
I'm preparing an ebook launch in July. I am self-publishing and distributing the ebook DRM free in multiple formats via Gumroad. I looked at Amazon and others as outlets but I didn't see much advantage. BTW, I have a day job as well and don't expect to make much money but at least I will have full control over my product including the ability to send out updates to customers as well as refund if someone isn't happy with the product.
Amazon gives the advantage of visibility as with a few exceptions they seem to be where most people (at least in fiction, if you're doing non-fiction I don't know) have had the most success (I hear romance does way better on B&N for indies, no clue why).
And Amazon lets the author/publisher choose DRM or not on KDP, though you can't change it without losing all sales rank etc.
Get a life, sci-fi is just entertainment and a little escapeisn, not everyone wants to read through 500 pages of math and physics to find some underlying revelation about the universe.
The other ship on the front page of the enterprise web site the `skylon`, looks awesome, almost like it was designed by Apple compared to the current crop of 'beige box' rockets. Its design spec seems to put it in the class of space DC3 too.
Someone should explain to this guy the concept of bootstrapping.
Saying that a man should be allowed to dream big and NASA are the ones who we should be laughing at considering they currently cant even send a man 100 miles into space.
Hopefully Elon and the new generation of space entrepreneurs will remedy this over time.
I love Sci-Fi novels such as Peter Hamilton's "Reality Dysfunction" where an AI does the function of all local and central government in a habitat for no personal gain and every single person is connected to it real time on a personal basis.
The day we can move from the slimy self preserving low-life which seems to inhabit this space now will be a better day for everyone.
I wonder how close we are?