One problem with the debate is that few people seem to agree on what the term "assault weapon" means. But researchers have come up with an intriguing solution, according to the NASA's Space Technology Program Web site, which underwrites that sort of problem solving. Inside our solar system, the distances are so great that easy, instantaneous back-and-forth communication of the sort that we're accustomed to on Earth -- a Skype-style video conversation, for example -- isn't really feasible, at least with present technology. The scientists and futurists working on Project Icarus -- a speculative attempt to design a starship capable of reaching the nearest neighboring star system, about 2.35 trillion miles (3.78 trillion kilometers) away -- spent a lot of time thinking about how such a ship might stay in contact with the Earth as it journeyed across the enormity of interstellar space. The Internet protocol that we use on Earth relies upon breaking up everything we transmit -- whether we're talking about text, voice or streaming video -- into little pieces of data, which is then reassembled at the other end so someone else can look at or listen to it.

In the next section, we'll look at an overview of a typical police robot. We'll look at how to do that in the next section. Too much color saturation will make a picture look unnaturally gaudy. Which choice will save them money? Unlike the protocol used on Earth, DTN doesn't assume a continuous end-to-end connection will exist, and it hangs onto data packets that it can't immediately send, until the connection is re-established. The number of solar panels needed for a house is not based solely on size, so no two 1000 square feet homes will be entirely alike. There are two common types of shatter-resistant glass. So far, though, there hasn't been any move to build such a system, perhaps because of the cost of putting multiple satellites in orbit around distant heavenly bodies is likely to be enormous. There have been recent breakthroughs in transferring data over copper wiring at nearly fiber optic speeds via reducing interference and other techniques. But they also have another option -- the 4.9 GHz band of the spectrum.

The enormous distances of space, for one, create huge lag times for electronic communications, and the signals have to make it from another planet's surface back to Earth through a gauntlet of space radiation that degrades their clarity. That's really, really far -- about 18 times the distance between Pluto and the sun, in fact -- but let's assume that an Earth civilization capable of sending a starship trillions of miles from Earth can do that. If a starship reached our nearest interstellar neighbor, the Alpha Centauri star system trillions of miles away, it would take 4.2 years for each side of a voice, video or text transmission to cross that mind-blowingly large distance. Modern video cards can take up a large amount of space inside the PC case because they need dedicated video RAM and additional cooling fans in order to deliver high performance. The transport system's purpose is to route the video and Internet feeds from the cable company to the access system.

DSL and cable modems are for broadband Internet access and require special connections. A streaming movie from Netflix shares the same crowded fiber optic cable as the pictures from your niece's birthday. But what if you want all of these things at the same time? Famous for his koans, this player could have it both ways and neither at the same time. Cores Power cables have 1, 2, 3, 4, what is control cable and 5 cores - based on their utility. And how can laptops be efficient enough to run on battery power alone? The switching power supplies used today are much smaller and lighter. The reason -- without getting into all the fancy math -- is that because of the relative frequencies in which radio waves operate, they're limited in how much data they can handle. Ideas for improving interplanetary communication include creating a network of satellites across the solar system, switching from radio signals to lasers for more efficient data transmission and establishing an interplanetary version of the internet that can function across vast distances in space. That's why NASA is working on the Deep Space Optical Communications Project, which would switch to utilizing lasers instead of radio transmitters and receiver.