From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Date: Fri Aug 27 1999 - 20:40:40 MDT
On Fri, 27 Aug 1999 jmcasey@pacific.net.sg wrote:
> >The problem is that there are
> >few barriers to a remote individual coming up with the design
> >themselves and little recourse to prevent them from using
> >such a design (i.e. no galactic patent law). This to me
> >seems to imply little galactic "trade".
>
> Except that if you exist in nanotime, the speed of light probably
> does constitute a relatively significant time constraint. If someone
> can provide you with your desires, why go to all the trouble of creating
> them yourself, especially if it takes a whole millisecond??
I may not have made myself clear. A "remote individual" would be
likely to be light-years away, so it doesn't take milliseconds.
The time required to "ask" -- "Has anyone got a
anti-quantum-reversetime-negative-mass frequency demodulator
design that works at 0.3 Kelvin?" and get the answer back,
"No, we found that the 0.2 Kelvin version works much better,
you can have the design by depositing 500 intergalactic trade
units in our account at First Galaxy Bank, we will ship to you
upon receiving confirmation of the deposit.", takes *years*.
You are unlikely to ask for anything you can design & build yourself
unless it involves a horribly complex problem that takes many years
of computation on your part.
Robert
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:04:55 MST