Inside Eric Schmidt's brain: Holodecks, robo-cars and jail bandwidth

Re: Huh, working his way back up in the public eye

Whilst I agree with mostly what you have written - your last point concerning bandwidth has prompted me to make this comment.

You ask why the need for Gigabit and question it's purpose. You have also pointed out a few years ago half a megabit would have been fine - and now a few years later - 1 or 2 would be fine.

On this basis I feel it is painfully obvious that our demand for data is growing at an ever increasing rate - and casting aside - the freeloaders who use copious amounts of data for ethically dodgy means (last I checked it was only illegal to upload copyright material - not to download it - in the UK at least) - our need for more bandwidth will just continue to grow. While there is not currently anything on the web requiring 5 or 8meg connections - that is not to say that next week a revolutionary new service will launch and we will all go "oh, that's a clever idea, I wish I had thought of that...." and after a year it will be hard to find someone who doesn't use said new service. Of course on top of that - there is the possibility of multiroom TV streaming - who knows what new online TV services will launch - sure they have been many - but they aren't a lot of use unless you already have a fast connection - when it comes to watching to watch different streams in different rooms.

Finally in the same way that Microsoft forcing the world on to a touchscreen OS will likely seriously bring down the cost of touchscreen monitors and probably herald the launch of reasonable priced Laptops with touchscreen capability. So flooding large parts of the world with high speed connections - SHOULD - cause a major drop in the price of bandwidth and backhaul. As with everything - Market demand lowers costs. (Unless you happen to be selling "3rd Party" concert tickets.... then Market demand apparently causes costs to rise threefold - name that company ;) )

Re: Huh, working his way back up in the public eye

"Even so, I'm hard pressed to see what else you'd be doing with more than a hundred megabits each, except basically waste it."

And 64K memory should be enough for everyone.

Why Google is more criticised

Google is perceived as more powerful. Apart from privacy problems, Facebook still feels mostly harmless in comparison. I think the reason Microsoft used to be so hated was also related to the strength of its monopoly more than the faults of its products.

Re: Mars?

I thought it was one's ass that must be transported to Mars...

Yes - a human right

This is about removing barriers that could keep portions of the world's population in serfdom in the same way that denial of education keeps people stuck in low-level labouring jobs.

Making it a right is not about forcing people into posting lolcats, browsing porn, or whatever, but it is about equality of opportunity.That is the business of government, and so making access a right should put them to work to make sure people aren't left behind with no chance to find or exploit whatever latent talents they may have.

But maybe you want to live adjacent to backwards people for the purpose of exploitation, or feeling superior, or for self-edifying anthropological studies? Well, bollocks to that.

Re: Internet a human right?

I'll summarize:

"I don't want it, therefore nobody else should either. And I can think of ways it's negative, therefore it doesn't have enough positives to warrant its existence."

Oh, and for what it's worth - net connectivity, cell phone access, and so forth have helped significantly changed the lives of some of the poorest people in Africa - where, paradoxically, technology is one of the cheaper things to get. People who had ho access to financial opportunity at -all- do; people who couldn't communicate to determine where to buy or sell food can; people who had no way to organize politically or even learn about politics and their world in general, have a way. The "help some social problems" ploy is just a rehash of the old "Why spend money on science when there are starving people?" fallacy. The research that created ARPANET could have been excoriated as only helping to make bombs and kill people, and couldn't ever help the poor or hungry - but here it is, and the poor and hungry are being helped via a network that enables aid workers to be more efficient, allows farmers to provide less expensive food, and on, and on.

Your inability to see the positive consequences of things does not mean they don't exist. And the fact that you're too pig-headed or myopic (or just plain bitter) to see a world outside your slammed-shut-and-locked front door doesn't mean that there isn't a huge, amazing world out there - one that includes kids in Africa, South Korean net cafes, xBoxes, fast networks, orchestras, and plastics research companies, and a magazine called 'Beverage World' that my wife used to intern for. It's a vast, complex, interconnected place. Try it; you might like it.