Why don't we just try to fix the problem, instead? It's probably not that difficult of an issue. Soon, someone will probably come up with a vitamin supplement or some sort of artificial gravity (maybe by spinning the ship) that will fix the whole issue. So why push it?
Besides, we're worried about psychological issues between the crew of these spacecraft. I'm sure that serious and extremely nasty dental issues won't help that.
So instead of growing a backbone, I say we just wait a couple years and grow a brain instead. That way, we'll have fairly happy astronauts returning home instead of toothless, frail, half-insane wrecks.
Speaking as a gamer, I know personally I cringe whenever I see a game that uses OpenGL. The reasons I dislike it are:
1. Just one more driver to download (or break) - OpenGL often requires drivers outside of the normal pack, and they can be a pain to download. GLSetup is slow for downloading, unresumable, and often screws up anyways. And the GL drivers can be very, very difficult to find otherwise.
And of course, it's just another thing that can break or get screwed up at some point, in which case you usually have to download it again.
2. It never, ever seems to work properly - OpenGL seems to break down far more often and extensibly then DirectX. In all the years of playing games, I've only ever had one DirectX display bug (and that was caused by corrupt drivers.) OpenGL, on the other hand, never seems to work perfectly and barely ever seems to work at all. It seems like hardly a week goes by without getting a new display error in Q3A or having it suddenly stop working for some odd reason.
Also, many times game features don't work in OpenGL, especially necessary things such as gamma adjustment.
3. Poor Implementation - Games that offer OpenGL as well as DirectX (and sometimes Glide) usually don't use it very well (possibly because it's so marginalized.) As you'd expect, it causes even more display errors, bugs, and slowness than even normal OpenGL.
Also, many video cards have truly bad OpenGL drivers, or even none at all. This can cause more problems. Only Nvidia really seem to make good OpenGL drivers.
One of my friends was sideswiped at 4 AM by someone who ran a stop sign way out in the country. It was just lucky she wasn't hurt. The guy ran the stop sign every morning; if you run stop signs/red lights all the time, eventually you are going to hit someone.
I don't think Athlons necessarily crash any more then Intel processors. I have a Classic Athlon 800 here that runs for weeks without crashing; running Win98se, even. It's much less flaky then the P2-350 it replaced. And it's even using 3 sticks of the cheapest RAM on the planet from different brands. It has a VIA chipset... they're flaky, but not crash-wise; usually it causes nasty hardware incompatabilities. I lucked out with this one.
Because if he deals with us, and follows our rules, he will be better accepted by American organizations and government. That way, if he ever had a technical problem and needs to be bailed out by NASA (or NASA ever needs to be bailed out by him) they are more likely to help, and more likely to help more and help sooner.
Considering the dangers of spaceflight, this seems to be a sound decision; it's better not to shun the FAA and NASA when you might need a rescue mission from them someday, for example if the return vehicle failed or the launch facilities were damaged.
I'd have to agree with you. My parents always treated me like a little kid. I was never allowed to do what normal people were allowed to do. I wasn't allowed to go anywhere unattended outside of my own block until I was at least 14. Even when I was 15-16, I was only allowed out to go to school, 'official' functions (like HS sport events) or to a very short list of approved friends' houses. Even when I was 17-18, they had to know exactly where I was going, when I'd be back, and who I'd be with. And this is considering that I never did anything even slightly bad.
So what was the result? I was a pretty good student, even a National Merit Scholor, but I turned out so indecisive I wasn't able to pick out a college to go to or a major to pursue. I'm so agoraphobic I can barely leave the house, and never without a specific reason. I don't have any social skills because I wasn't allowed to develope a life.
So now that I had a reasonable amount of freedom, I don't have the faintest idea of what to do with it.
This kind of surveillance is only going to make matters worse. However, it's not really that big of a deal, because it's something that overbearing parents could have found out anyways. So I wouldn't worry too much.
What are you talking about? Tons of games have alcohol or cigarettes (and even some have illegal drugs.) Examples: Fallout 1 and 2, Deus Ex, Rune, Quake 3 Arena(Sarge's cigar), Redneck Rampage, and Everquest. Usually whether or not you want to use them is up to the player, but not always.
Most games that don't have alcohol or cigs don't because they wouldn't make any sense or have any practical use. What sense would they make in Descent 3 or Serious Sam? Religious beliefs are usually ignored because they don't deal with the plot. However, in games where they do, like Messiah, they are usually stated or obvious.
On a sidenote, I don't know what you people do to your poor computers, but it's not normal for any incarnation of windows to crash 3-5 times a day. I have a old PII-350 with faulty ram and an extremely dll-rotted install, and it crashes maybe 2-3 times a day. The Athlon next to it almost never crashes (less than once a day.) They're both running 98.
Because it doesn't start until 2005. By then, probably 95% of the American and European population will be in DSL or cable-modem range. Think of this; I live in a 10,000 person town in Wyoming, and I'm certain the area will have DSL or Cable modems within 2 years. If we have it here, everyone else already does I'm sure.
As for countries like China and India, not too many there will be able to afford them. Maybe cybercafes and the like will have them, but people don't get too excited about that.
That's because you CAN stick with DSL. I'd sign over my soul to MS if they'd provide me with a decent gaming connection. Heck, I'd even use AOL! (although with download-only it's not going to be worth crap for games.)
The thing I'm worried about here is latency. Does anyone know if latency is a problem with satellites? The only insurmountable restriction I see here is the speed of light, but it IS a long way.
It's not the same case if you have a resource that is turned against others by an attacker, as it is if it does damage because of poor maintenance. Think of this; suppose you kept a propane tank on your property. Should you be liable if you fail to maintain it and it explodes, severely damaging your neighbor's property? Probably. Should you be liable if some idiot shoots it with a high-powered rifle from 2 miles away and causes it to explode? Probably not. Under your reasoning it's your fault for not having a dozen security guys sweeping the area for attacks or keeping your propane tank is a 3-inch steel safe.
Also remember that >95% of the computer-using population doesn't know ANYTHING about security, and of the remaining 5%, 4.5% of them have knowledge doesn't extend beyond 'don't open email attachments and keep sharing turned off.'
And no, you can't blame it on Microsoft. You can break into an unsecured linux box just as easily as a windows 9x box, and even a untweaked BSD is almost certainly vulnerable.
Having lived in a US West area for a long time, I can safely say that Bellsouth is the lesser evil. Around here, US West is pretty good at providing phone service, but they suck at providing anything internet. I hear in some small towns they've saturated the bandwidth and can't sell any more T1s. And as for things like DSL and Cable modems.... don't make me laugh. By they time they're here, they'll be as outdated as a 14.4 modem.
Maybe it was at one point, but according to www.pricewatch.com, a 128 MB stick of RDRAM currently costs about 350$. Prices must have gone down a lot since you checked last.
192 Megabytes is actually 196 million bytes. That's what my computer lists every POST, so it's what I get used to thinking of it as. Yeah, I guess it's really 192 MB.
Sure, I'll think of Athlon the same way as I do of Pentium, except that AMD doesn't recycle names like that. Their next processors have completely different names. So, yeah, Athlon will be old stuff, but the Thunderbird or whatever replaces it will be new and nifty.
13 thousand? How many P4s you need, anyways? I think you probably meant 13 hundred.
I think they should change the name, myself. When I hear "Pentium" I don't associate it with anything; it could be a very obsolete p1 166 or a plenty fast P3-800. On the other hand, when I hear 'Athlon', I do associate that with at least a fairly fast computer.
It sure is US West. But you bring grim news... I think Charter Communications recently promised to bring DSL there (are they the ones that are affiliated with wyoming.com?) I guess I'd better wait before rejoicing.
We only have one major carrier here, and trust me you don't want that to happen to you. They have very much a 'rape and run' attitude, where they charge out the ass for internet services that are cheap other places (normal ISDN is around 300 a month, IIRC) and don't even work properly because they haven't contributed anything to the backbone. We just recently got DSL in the state(not where I am, though), and that's only because the state governor has been bitching to them for ages. Everyone hates them.
Of course, we WERE going to get cable modems, but the AT&T bastards bought TCI and scratched that plan. I think the DOJ should sentance all their executives to using 56k modems for the rest of their lives. Serve them right.
I don't think that the $1300 or so it would take to buy a computer that runs Unreal quickly and a big monitor would save anyone. Not for any meaningful amount of time.
Also, you'd have an extremely hard time getting the money to anyone who needs it, and stopping the friendly neighborhood warlord from taking it by force and using it to buy equipment some of his cadre. Sending food? Watch it end up in the black market. Permanently saving people is much more expensive and difficult then you think.
It must depend on the computer. One of mine failed, and by the end of the day I was able to smell something burning (it toasted the motherboard a bit; fortunatly, it wasn't really damaged.)
I just think it's a waste of time. Of all the reasons not to use Mozilla (painfully slow, not completely functional, ties to AOL) I don't think anyone has ever complained about the lack of skins. I think skins are a waste of time, a source of bloat, and not something that belongs on a browser anyways. I mean, I haven't even used any with winamp!
Why don't they use their time to fix the bugs, excise the bloat, and optimize things, instead of adding useless features no one wants? I think 80% of people would prefer one well-thought-out interface instead of many buggy bloated customizable ones.
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Why don't we just try to fix the problem, instead? It's probably not that difficult of an issue. Soon, someone will probably come up with a vitamin supplement or some sort of artificial gravity (maybe by spinning the ship) that will fix the whole issue. So why push it?
Besides, we're worried about psychological issues between the crew of these spacecraft. I'm sure that serious and extremely nasty dental issues won't help that.
So instead of growing a backbone, I say we just wait a couple years and grow a brain instead. That way, we'll have fairly happy astronauts returning home instead of toothless, frail, half-insane wrecks.
Speaking as a gamer, I know personally I cringe whenever I see a game that uses OpenGL. The reasons I dislike it are:
1. Just one more driver to download (or break) - OpenGL often requires drivers outside of the normal pack, and they can be a pain to download. GLSetup is slow for downloading, unresumable, and often screws up anyways. And the GL drivers can be very, very difficult to find otherwise.
And of course, it's just another thing that can break or get screwed up at some point, in which case you usually have to download it again.
2. It never, ever seems to work properly - OpenGL seems to break down far more often and extensibly then DirectX. In all the years of playing games, I've only ever had one DirectX display bug (and that was caused by corrupt drivers.) OpenGL, on the other hand, never seems to work perfectly and barely ever seems to work at all. It seems like hardly a week goes by without getting a new display error in Q3A or having it suddenly stop working for some odd reason.
Also, many times game features don't work in OpenGL, especially necessary things such as gamma adjustment.
3. Poor Implementation - Games that offer OpenGL as well as DirectX (and sometimes Glide) usually don't use it very well (possibly because it's so marginalized.) As you'd expect, it causes even more display errors, bugs, and slowness than even normal OpenGL.
Also, many video cards have truly bad OpenGL drivers, or even none at all. This can cause more problems. Only Nvidia really seem to make good OpenGL drivers.
One of my friends was sideswiped at 4 AM by someone who ran a stop sign way out in the country. It was just lucky she wasn't hurt. The guy ran the stop sign every morning; if you run stop signs/red lights all the time, eventually you are going to hit someone.
I don't think Athlons necessarily crash any more then Intel processors. I have a Classic Athlon 800 here that runs for weeks without crashing; running Win98se, even. It's much less flaky then the P2-350 it replaced. And it's even using 3 sticks of the cheapest RAM on the planet from different brands. It has a VIA chipset... they're flaky, but not crash-wise; usually it causes nasty hardware incompatabilities. I lucked out with this one.
Because if he deals with us, and follows our rules, he will be better accepted by American organizations and government. That way, if he ever had a technical problem and needs to be bailed out by NASA (or NASA ever needs to be bailed out by him) they are more likely to help, and more likely to help more and help sooner.
Considering the dangers of spaceflight, this seems to be a sound decision; it's better not to shun the FAA and NASA when you might need a rescue mission from them someday, for example if the return vehicle failed or the launch facilities were damaged.
I'd have to agree with you. My parents always treated me like a little kid. I was never allowed to do what normal people were allowed to do. I wasn't allowed to go anywhere unattended outside of my own block until I was at least 14. Even when I was 15-16, I was only allowed out to go to school, 'official' functions (like HS sport events) or to a very short list of approved friends' houses. Even when I was 17-18, they had to know exactly where I was going, when I'd be back, and who I'd be with. And this is considering that I never did anything even slightly bad. So what was the result? I was a pretty good student, even a National Merit Scholor, but I turned out so indecisive I wasn't able to pick out a college to go to or a major to pursue. I'm so agoraphobic I can barely leave the house, and never without a specific reason. I don't have any social skills because I wasn't allowed to develope a life. So now that I had a reasonable amount of freedom, I don't have the faintest idea of what to do with it. This kind of surveillance is only going to make matters worse. However, it's not really that big of a deal, because it's something that overbearing parents could have found out anyways. So I wouldn't worry too much.
What are you talking about? Tons of games have alcohol or cigarettes (and even some have illegal drugs.) Examples: Fallout 1 and 2, Deus Ex, Rune, Quake 3 Arena(Sarge's cigar), Redneck Rampage, and Everquest. Usually whether or not you want to use them is up to the player, but not always.
Most games that don't have alcohol or cigs don't because they wouldn't make any sense or have any practical use. What sense would they make in Descent 3 or Serious Sam? Religious beliefs are usually ignored because they don't deal with the plot. However, in games where they do, like Messiah, they are usually stated or obvious.
On a sidenote, I don't know what you people do to your poor computers, but it's not normal for any incarnation of windows to crash 3-5 times a day. I have a old PII-350 with faulty ram and an extremely dll-rotted install, and it crashes maybe 2-3 times a day. The Athlon next to it almost never crashes (less than once a day.) They're both running 98.
Because it doesn't start until 2005. By then, probably 95% of the American and European population will be in DSL or cable-modem range. Think of this; I live in a 10,000 person town in Wyoming, and I'm certain the area will have DSL or Cable modems within 2 years. If we have it here, everyone else already does I'm sure.
As for countries like China and India, not too many there will be able to afford them. Maybe cybercafes and the like will have them, but people don't get too excited about that.
That's because you CAN stick with DSL. I'd sign over my soul to MS if they'd provide me with a decent gaming connection. Heck, I'd even use AOL! (although with download-only it's not going to be worth crap for games.)
The thing I'm worried about here is latency. Does anyone know if latency is a problem with satellites? The only insurmountable restriction I see here is the speed of light, but it IS a long way.
It's not the same case if you have a resource that is turned against others by an attacker, as it is if it does damage because of poor maintenance. Think of this; suppose you kept a propane tank on your property. Should you be liable if you fail to maintain it and it explodes, severely damaging your neighbor's property? Probably. Should you be liable if some idiot shoots it with a high-powered rifle from 2 miles away and causes it to explode? Probably not. Under your reasoning it's your fault for not having a dozen security guys sweeping the area for attacks or keeping your propane tank is a 3-inch steel safe.
Also remember that >95% of the computer-using population doesn't know ANYTHING about security, and of the remaining 5%, 4.5% of them have knowledge doesn't extend beyond 'don't open email attachments and keep sharing turned off.'
And no, you can't blame it on Microsoft. You can break into an unsecured linux box just as easily as a windows 9x box, and even a untweaked BSD is almost certainly vulnerable.
Having lived in a US West area for a long time, I can safely say that Bellsouth is the lesser evil. Around here, US West is pretty good at providing phone service, but they suck at providing anything internet. I hear in some small towns they've saturated the bandwidth and can't sell any more T1s. And as for things like DSL and Cable modems.... don't make me laugh. By they time they're here, they'll be as outdated as a 14.4 modem.
Maybe it was at one point, but according to www.pricewatch.com, a 128 MB stick of RDRAM currently costs about 350$. Prices must have gone down a lot since you checked last.
192 Megabytes is actually 196 million bytes. That's what my computer lists every POST, so it's what I get used to thinking of it as. Yeah, I guess it's really 192 MB.
Yeah, 256 MB isn't too much(I use 196 myself), but I think 256 MB of RDRAM is only somewhere around 700$.
Why would they get 256 MB ram so they don't have to replace machines? Why replace a machine to add ram? Can't anyone there stick in a DIMM?
Yeah, but you can waste 1000$ on excess ram instead of spending it on something worthwhile, like a Geoforce2 or Voodoo 5 :-)
For that much money, you could replace 4.522 Gigabytes of RDRAM in 128 MB increments. Just a little excessive for your standard box, don't ya think?
:-)
More likely, you mistyped that, and it should be $1800. Still, that's over 384 MB, way too much for most things.
Don't think I didn't like your joke though
Sure, I'll think of Athlon the same way as I do of Pentium, except that AMD doesn't recycle names like that. Their next processors have completely different names. So, yeah, Athlon will be old stuff, but the Thunderbird or whatever replaces it will be new and nifty.
13 thousand? How many P4s you need, anyways? I think you probably meant 13 hundred.
I think they should change the name, myself. When I hear "Pentium" I don't associate it with anything; it could be a very obsolete p1 166 or a plenty fast P3-800. On the other hand, when I hear 'Athlon', I do associate that with at least a fairly fast computer.
It sure is US West. But you bring grim news... I think Charter Communications recently promised to bring DSL there (are they the ones that are affiliated with wyoming.com?) I guess I'd better wait before rejoicing.
We only have one major carrier here, and trust me you don't want that to happen to you. They have very much a 'rape and run' attitude, where they charge out the ass for internet services that are cheap other places (normal ISDN is around 300 a month, IIRC) and don't even work properly because they haven't contributed anything to the backbone. We just recently got DSL in the state(not where I am, though), and that's only because the state governor has been bitching to them for ages. Everyone hates them.
Of course, we WERE going to get cable modems, but the AT&T bastards bought TCI and scratched that plan. I think the DOJ should sentance all their executives to using 56k modems for the rest of their lives. Serve them right.
I don't think that the $1300 or so it would take to buy a computer that runs Unreal quickly and a big monitor would save anyone. Not for any meaningful amount of time.
Also, you'd have an extremely hard time getting the money to anyone who needs it, and stopping the friendly neighborhood warlord from taking it by force and using it to buy equipment some of his cadre. Sending food? Watch it end up in the black market. Permanently saving people is much more expensive and difficult then you think.
It must depend on the computer. One of mine failed, and by the end of the day I was able to smell something burning (it toasted the motherboard a bit; fortunatly, it wasn't really damaged.)
Last time I played Quake, I didn't physically aim and fire a gun. All is relative :-)
I just think it's a waste of time. Of all the reasons not to use Mozilla (painfully slow, not completely functional, ties to AOL) I don't think anyone has ever complained about the lack of skins. I think skins are a waste of time, a source of bloat, and not something that belongs on a browser anyways. I mean, I haven't even used any with winamp!
Why don't they use their time to fix the bugs, excise the bloat, and optimize things, instead of adding useless features no one wants? I think 80% of people would prefer one well-thought-out interface instead of many buggy bloated customizable ones.