Excepting tabs and clickable web addresses-both things I don't really have an appreciation for- gnome-terminal is up to pace with Term, but it's hardly light years ahead of Eterm, IMO. In my experience it uses about 4x the memory and is irritatingly slow compared to Eterm, which is enough to make me ditch it alone. I don't really need anything fancy, but Eterm strikes a balance between eyecandy, usability, customizability and resource use--for my taste anyway. I'm one of those freaks that like to have about a bazillion terms open and spread across a few virtual desktops, and that's why tabs don't do it for me, and also why I'd be concerned about resource use. Eterm supports very large scroll backs, too, I think... But I rarely have use for more than a few tens of lines anyhow--in most instances it's easier and faster to retype a command than to scroll through a few hundred lines of stuff that I'm not concerned about. I rarely mouse around inside terminals, so that's lost on me too.
Regarding everything else, it's there. I'm quite satisfied with Eterm, I don't think I could ever want more than it provides--but if someone came up with something that completely changed terminal use for the better, I'd at least try it for a while.
the Japanese are experts at taking our big, expensive, untenable technology demonstrations and turning them into far more efficient, marketable economic successes down the road.
I hear this over and over again, and I've never really been convinced. Yeah, the Japanese are great with electronics, and they're great at making things smaller and (as a result) more efficient. They're great at mass producing things--they practically ressurected the German auto manufactures after the US and Japs clobbered them in production speed, cost and quality by streamlining their facilities in the late 70's- early 80's, and they can make consumer electronics by the bazillion--but so can Taiwan, S. Korea, etc.
Practically none of those things apply to jetliners as a whole. Aerospace engineering hasn't changed signifigantly since the Concorde, save the benefits of computer simulation and large scale use of CAD/CAE... But all that did was signifigantly reduce the time required for development of planes. Aircraft engines have become more efficient and reliable as a result of simulations, but not to a staggering degree. There hasn't been a (good God, I hate to say it) paradigm shift *cringe* in the civilian aerospace industry for a loooong time, and there's no good reason to expect one soon.
Electronics on the other hand have a relatively short development cycle, and there have been constant and very signifigant advances in this area since the time of the Walkman. I look at it this way, Airplanes are like humans, and cars/electronics are like insects or perhaps bacteria. Humans take a long time to mature and as a result, evolve. Insects with lifespans in days/weeks have the potential to evolve quite quickly.
You're right to say that never is a strong word, but the things that the Japs are good at don't easily apply to big planes. That's why I say there's great potential for smaller, very fast, special purpose business class planes--which leverage what they're good at, making many, making them smaller and more efficient.
Hey, as long as you're willing to take out a bank loan to fly then I guess that's your problem. Concorde cost 1,000 per person per hour to fly--then France and Britian took about half of that in the shorts. The program was never meant to be profitable, it was a demonstration of technology, ability, and the economic superiority of the west.
It will never be profitable to fly a supersonic airliner. It's barely profitable to fly a giant sky bus, and the aircraft manufactuers realize this. They're building even bigger planes to take advantage of economy of scale and the increased efficiency of ginormous engines--and they're aimed specifically at the pacific routes.
The only way supersonic travel will ever be profitable is in the Gulfstream V size class. Get one of those to go Mach 2, and people/businesses that can afford $25,000/hour will eat it up like mad.
No, you're absolutely right. I've thought the same for a while, basically. Either GWB is an evil super genius, or he was installed by a controlling insterst/corporatiins/seceret society/whatever. I really should thank that Occam fellow one of these days.
Though it seems to me that the administration is the one pulling Congress' chain more than anything; by association or by their own will, who's to say... One thing's for sure: the oil companies have never had it so good!
GWB has the power because he has congress by the balls. Even within his own party, significant dissent from the official party line is enough to get one instantaneously labeled "unpatriotic", and you're excommunicated from anything important--you might as well resign because even your own side won't have much to do with you.
Separation of powers is a good idea, but it does practically no good when the majority of the representatives are on leashes.
I know exactly what you're talking about. I'm normally a good multi-tasker... But when I had to go through speech class (trust me, I would've rather stapled my ballsack to my forehead), I got overloaded in this way, I think. Between trying to please the instructor, trying to not to freak out or screw up, using hand jestures even tough I normally don't, keeping eye contact with the crowd, trying to remember what the fuck I was talking about, following the outline on the projector, and all of the thousands of other things that go on inside one's mind... I was screwed up.
Look through a paper-towell tube and that's what my vision was like till about 2 minutes after my speech was over. I seriously don't know how I didn't break my neck trying to find my seat, my equilibrium was shot and I've had a better time trying to find my way in pitch black darkness.. There's no doubt that a good part of the problem was because of my stress levels, but there's a ton of stuff that one's got to keep track of to do even simple things, even if it is done mostly sub-conciously. At some point, the brain's just got to be totally swamped. Neural Syn flooding or something, I don't know. God, I hated that class.
I think Coke contains both phosphoric acid and citric acid. Most colas have a citrusy taste to me. But you're right, it's not especially good for one's health in many ways.
I understand that the vinyl is electronically transfered, and it's so smooth that not much of it can go into the solution, though I'm sure there is some. Let's just say that you won't catch me using a teflon pan. Or drinking coke.
Indeed, but aluminum needs it just the same, especially considering that because of the carbonation and citric acids most sodas are slightly acidic. The metal they stamp the ends out of is pre-coated with a vinyl compound. If it weren't for that, the soda would taste terrible very shortly!
1cm thick steel case? No way! Well, maybe on an SGI or something (them suckers are massive), but still that's about 10 times overkill. Maybe you have a case that thick if you want to make it bullet resistant. Heh. Most cases I've seen were made of 16 or 14 gauge (which translates to about 1.5mm), with some parts going as thick as 12 gauge for the backplates and certain structural pieces--like on older SGI and SUN computers, and on some heavier power supplies. I mean, my '64 Ford truck is old iron, but there's not a piece of sheet metal over 1/8 inch on it, aside from the frame rails.
Aluminum alloys are generally about half as dense as steel, and are inferior in strength in many respects. The benefit of aluminum is that it's light enough to allow one to beef the structure up well enough to make up for it's comparative lack of strength, and it's very malleable--you can bend it into shapes that would cause steel to break. And as with all things it's the shape that counts. All things being equal I'd expect that the aluminum case to be significantly thicker than the steel one. I have a micrometer, but no aluminum case to test that out on:D It's really quite a complicated science comparing materials (I would like to know more about myself, if I ever go PhD that will likely be my direction) but both materials have their advantages and disadvantages.
Soda cans are aluminum for a few reasons, and none of them are because aluminum is especially strong. For one, it's much easier to punch out into the shape we know soda cans for today. Like I said, steel could break under some circumstances. This is one. The machine that forms them is a giant drop punch, and in one step the can is pressed into its shape, it happens in a few hundred milliseconds. Steel would likely tear because of its stiffness, and it would wear out the tooling faster, but that's probably not signifigant. That's why "tin" cans, which are actually steel, are rolled and seamed. Secondly, if you're shipping out hundreds of millions of cans of product yearly, it would be wise to make the container as light as possible, not only because it costs more in materials, but it costs more in packaging and transportation--which surprisingly is supposed to cost more than the can, and more than the drink within. Aluminum cans used to be much thicker before they figured out the hyperbolic style tops and bottoms, and I heard long ago that the primary reason for the change was indeed shipping costs! Maybe it's true, maybe not, but it's a funny story anyhow.
Yeah, there's no doubt that you're going in the right direction, especially considering the nuclear furnace that's under our feet. It was a good drunken rant anyhow, though of course I realize that the greenhouse gasses are more of a problem. I really thought that we would be contributing more to the energy input. Thanks for the sanity check.
Well, let's see... The amount of energy coming from the sun and from the radioactive decay in the earth is pretty much the same as it is today, for say 100 Million years. All during that time quite a bit of that energy has been stored by plants and microscopic critters and was deposited in the ocean floor..
We've been using that stored energy, releasing all of that carbon which is superbly good at reflecting infrared energy--which impacts the primary means for the cooling of the planet--radiation. It's proven by ice core samples that CO2 levels were fairly level for a long long time up until the 1800's, where concentration has grown almost exponentially. Even the oil giants will admit it in their studies!
We're using up gobs of energy that was stored up a long long time ago, which necessarily produces heat (except for energy derived from natural events which we have no control over, such as hydro, wind, geothermal, etc.--but most of our power comes from coal, oil and gas). Yearly consumption, by the way, is on the order of ~500 exajoules today. That's a buttload of energy, and if the earth can't get rid of it by radiating, it's just not gonna happen. If radiating ability is significantly impaired, we lose. Once it gets hot enough, water vapor will start to have much the same impact as the CO2. The cycle could literally run away and blow up in our faces, for all we know. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. I can't say, but many scientists have a pretty good idea of what will happen, but it's possible that they know what will happen about as well as anyone else... So, why stack all your chips and throw the ball into the roulette wheel without giving it a real good thought?
So, it's a two forked problem, we're pumping out tons of energy such that the planet has never experienced before, and we ARE impairing it's ability to radiate, as far as we can tell. History can't account for today, and for mankind--and we must tread cautiously because of that. It's true that there are climatic changes over the course of thousands of years, no argument there. But there were no humans driving their H2's around back then. A few degrees over the course of a couple hundred years are particularly worrying in the grand scheme of things, and sticking your head in the ground is the worst kind of solution!
Heh, I just googled on a whim "rumsfeld.swf"... Bingo! I spent like an hour looking for it the other day, and didn't turn up anything! Hah, I guess that's the way it goes. I even sent moveon.org a note through their webmail, and they didn't do anything! Anyway, here it is:
You're right. I studied desert ecosystems before I changed my direction in college. They are quite sensitive, and over millions of years many of the little critters in those areas have become quite dependant on very certian conditions, and very precise timing of monsoons and changes of the season--which greenhouse warming is bound to affect drastically anyway.
I say put these collectors as individual units in people's yards--if they agree--and give them a percentage off their electricity bills as lease for the land. They get the power to run their AC for free, and they contribute to the power grid, win/win.. It's basically the same deal with cell towers. We have one on one of our properties, and we get $2,000 a month for it. Best tenants we've ever had, I must say!
Of course, they'd have to be almost completely maintance free so you don't need a horde of technicians running all over fixing them. In this way, the environmental impact will be mitigated, as there are already people in the area with houses and paving and all of that... But that's good also because distributed power grids are much more reliable (and probably more efficient) than grids depending on only a few sources.
This could be quite popular all over the southwest if it were economically feasible.
Yeah, and that's also the reason Clear Channel pumps up the bass on their broadcasts, as far as I can figure... To make people with sad-ass stereos happy.
Seriosuly, even the female on one of my long time favorite morning shows spikes down in the 100Hz area after they fuck with it, and she's a 4 foot nothin asian lady, but she soulds like she's an 8' tall amazon. The guys on the show sound like barry white, and I've met them personally--they sound normal! Normal talking voice should not come through the subwoofer with an 80Hz filter! It's not natrual. Practically nobody sounds that way, and if they do they're probably deformed!
It pisses me off to no end because I have to adjust my EQ if I want to listen to them (and not have my brains turned to liquid, mind you)--and I don't like to do that, I really like to keep my stereo's levels balanced!
Oh well, since they've turned libertarian and started shouting at kids to "get off my damn lawn!" they're not so fun to listen to anymore.
I've had the H120 for a little over two years, plays oggs fine. If it had a decent interface I'd be really happy. But I'd be even more happy if the USB port didn't decide to stop functioning a few months ago. Gotta take it apart to get some new music on it. Grrr!
Seriously, I dunno what happened to it. Never been dropped or abused or anything like that.
Racing games don't need to look shiny to be good racing games, you know why? Because you're almost always focusing almost all your attention right at the center of the screen... Just about like you do when you're racing in real life, or just driving down the highway, for that matter.
Aside from looking in your mirrors your peripheral vision takes care of the rest, and if you're not focusing mostly in a 20 degree cone when you're doing better than 200 km/h, well, you're toast.
Even if all of that stuff was displayed perfectly, you're just not going to see it. It's total information overload--unless you're some superhuman with brain bandwidth that can handle it, in which case you'd probably make a fantastic race car driver, and you wouldn't need or want for simulations.
The grandparent is absolutely right, as long as a sim gives you the impression that you're doing something and you're having fun, then so what about the eyecandy? One of the most realistic flight sims I've ever played was the Harrier sim on Apples in the early 90's and it's not because it was pretty--I've played sims that were more detailed graphically even at the time--but because it REALLY made you feel like you were flying a Harrier. That's what it's all about afterall. If someone can acheive that in a 500kb executable, all the more power to them.
Slashdot Mirror
Excepting tabs and clickable web addresses-both things I don't really have an appreciation for- gnome-terminal is up to pace with Term, but it's hardly light years ahead of Eterm, IMO. In my experience it uses about 4x the memory and is irritatingly slow compared to Eterm, which is enough to make me ditch it alone. I don't really need anything fancy, but Eterm strikes a balance between eyecandy, usability, customizability and resource use--for my taste anyway.
I'm one of those freaks that like to have about a bazillion terms open and spread across a few virtual desktops, and that's why tabs don't do it for me, and also why I'd be concerned about resource use. Eterm supports very large scroll backs, too, I think... But I rarely have use for more than a few tens of lines anyhow--in most instances it's easier and faster to retype a command than to scroll through a few hundred lines of stuff that I'm not concerned about. I rarely mouse around inside terminals, so that's lost on me too.
Regarding everything else, it's there. I'm quite satisfied with Eterm, I don't think I could ever want more than it provides--but if someone came up with something that completely changed terminal use for the better, I'd at least try it for a while.
MightyMartian then said unto the masses "OMFG PWNT!" And there was much rejoicing.
the Japanese are experts at taking our big, expensive, untenable technology demonstrations and turning them into far more efficient, marketable economic successes down the road.
I hear this over and over again, and I've never really been convinced. Yeah, the Japanese are great with electronics, and they're great at making things smaller and (as a result) more efficient. They're great at mass producing things--they practically ressurected the German auto manufactures after the US and Japs clobbered them in production speed, cost and quality by streamlining their facilities in the late 70's- early 80's, and they can make consumer electronics by the bazillion--but so can Taiwan, S. Korea, etc.
Practically none of those things apply to jetliners as a whole. Aerospace engineering hasn't changed signifigantly since the Concorde, save the benefits of computer simulation and large scale use of CAD/CAE... But all that did was signifigantly reduce the time required for development of planes. Aircraft engines have become more efficient and reliable as a result of simulations, but not to a staggering degree. There hasn't been a (good God, I hate to say it) paradigm shift *cringe* in the civilian aerospace industry for a loooong time, and there's no good reason to expect one soon.
Electronics on the other hand have a relatively short development cycle, and there have been constant and very signifigant advances in this area since the time of the Walkman. I look at it this way, Airplanes are like humans, and cars/electronics are like insects or perhaps bacteria. Humans take a long time to mature and as a result, evolve. Insects with lifespans in days/weeks have the potential to evolve quite quickly.
You're right to say that never is a strong word, but the things that the Japs are good at don't easily apply to big planes. That's why I say there's great potential for smaller, very fast, special purpose business class planes--which leverage what they're good at, making many, making them smaller and more efficient.
Hey, as long as you're willing to take out a bank loan to fly then I guess that's your problem. Concorde cost 1,000 per person per hour to fly--then France and Britian took about half of that in the shorts. The program was never meant to be profitable, it was a demonstration of technology, ability, and the economic superiority of the west.
It will never be profitable to fly a supersonic airliner. It's barely profitable to fly a giant sky bus, and the aircraft manufactuers realize this. They're building even bigger planes to take advantage of economy of scale and the increased efficiency of ginormous engines--and they're aimed specifically at the pacific routes.
The only way supersonic travel will ever be profitable is in the Gulfstream V size class. Get one of those to go Mach 2, and people/businesses that can afford $25,000/hour will eat it up like mad.
No, you're absolutely right. I've thought the same for a while, basically. Either GWB is an evil super genius, or he was installed by a controlling insterst/corporatiins/seceret society/whatever. I really should thank that Occam fellow one of these days.
Though it seems to me that the administration is the one pulling Congress' chain more than anything; by association or by their own will, who's to say... One thing's for sure: the oil companies have never had it so good!
GWB has the power because he has congress by the balls. Even within his own party, significant dissent from the official party line is enough to get one instantaneously labeled "unpatriotic", and you're excommunicated from anything important--you might as well resign because even your own side won't have much to do with you.
Separation of powers is a good idea, but it does practically no good when the majority of the representatives are on leashes.
Very insightful! If everyone were so consistent in their beliefs I feel the world would be a better place.
Because they don't want you to be cured.
Yeah, that would probably be better than speech class. Good thought!
I know exactly what you're talking about. I'm normally a good multi-tasker... But when I had to go through speech class (trust me, I would've rather stapled my ballsack to my forehead), I got overloaded in this way, I think. Between trying to please the instructor, trying to not to freak out or screw up, using hand jestures even tough I normally don't, keeping eye contact with the crowd, trying to remember what the fuck I was talking about, following the outline on the projector, and all of the thousands of other things that go on inside one's mind... I was screwed up.
Look through a paper-towell tube and that's what my vision was like till about 2 minutes after my speech was over. I seriously don't know how I didn't break my neck trying to find my seat, my equilibrium was shot and I've had a better time trying to find my way in pitch black darkness.. There's no doubt that a good part of the problem was because of my stress levels, but there's a ton of stuff that one's got to keep track of to do even simple things, even if it is done mostly sub-conciously. At some point, the brain's just got to be totally swamped. Neural Syn flooding or something, I don't know. God, I hated that class.
What's the USA going to do start a war?
I don't see it being a problem unless North Elbonia has a factory making nuclear powered vibrators...
I think Coke contains both phosphoric acid and citric acid. Most colas have a citrusy taste to me. But you're right, it's not especially good for one's health in many ways.
I understand that the vinyl is electronically transfered, and it's so smooth that not much of it can go into the solution, though I'm sure there is some. Let's just say that you won't catch me using a teflon pan. Or drinking coke.
Indeed, but aluminum needs it just the same, especially considering that because of the carbonation and citric acids most sodas are slightly acidic. The metal they stamp the ends out of is pre-coated with a vinyl compound. If it weren't for that, the soda would taste terrible very shortly!
1cm thick steel case? No way! Well, maybe on an SGI or something (them suckers are massive), but still that's about 10 times overkill. Maybe you have a case that thick if you want to make it bullet resistant. Heh. Most cases I've seen were made of 16 or 14 gauge (which translates to about 1.5mm), with some parts going as thick as 12 gauge for the backplates and certain structural pieces--like on older SGI and SUN computers, and on some heavier power supplies. I mean, my '64 Ford truck is old iron, but there's not a piece of sheet metal over 1/8 inch on it, aside from the frame rails.
:D It's really quite a complicated science comparing materials (I would like to know more about myself, if I ever go PhD that will likely be my direction) but both materials have their advantages and disadvantages.
Aluminum alloys are generally about half as dense as steel, and are inferior in strength in many respects. The benefit of aluminum is that it's light enough to allow one to beef the structure up well enough to make up for it's comparative lack of strength, and it's very malleable--you can bend it into shapes that would cause steel to break. And as with all things it's the shape that counts. All things being equal I'd expect that the aluminum case to be significantly thicker than the steel one. I have a micrometer, but no aluminum case to test that out on
Soda cans are aluminum for a few reasons, and none of them are because aluminum is especially strong. For one, it's much easier to punch out into the shape we know soda cans for today. Like I said, steel could break under some circumstances. This is one. The machine that forms them is a giant drop punch, and in one step the can is pressed into its shape, it happens in a few hundred milliseconds. Steel would likely tear because of its stiffness, and it would wear out the tooling faster, but that's probably not signifigant. That's why "tin" cans, which are actually steel, are rolled and seamed. Secondly, if you're shipping out hundreds of millions of cans of product yearly, it would be wise to make the container as light as possible, not only because it costs more in materials, but it costs more in packaging and transportation--which surprisingly is supposed to cost more than the can, and more than the drink within. Aluminum cans used to be much thicker before they figured out the hyperbolic style tops and bottoms, and I heard long ago that the primary reason for the change was indeed shipping costs! Maybe it's true, maybe not, but it's a funny story anyhow.
They usually get a spray of hot lead because they like to spray acid or plasma first. Hey, they asked for it!
If ET the Extra-Terrestrial ate Elliot's brain I'd expect no less than for him to get a facefull of 00 buckshot in the videogame!
Heh, yeah no doubt. That last bit is very insightful, especially.
Yeah, there's no doubt that you're going in the right direction, especially considering the nuclear furnace that's under our feet. It was a good drunken rant anyhow, though of course I realize that the greenhouse gasses are more of a problem. I really thought that we would be contributing more to the energy input. Thanks for the sanity check.
Good ol' Rummy would NEVER tell a lie! :P
Well, let's see... The amount of energy coming from the sun and from the radioactive decay in the earth is pretty much the same as it is today, for say 100 Million years. All during that time quite a bit of that energy has been stored by plants and microscopic critters and was deposited in the ocean floor..
We've been using that stored energy, releasing all of that carbon which is superbly good at reflecting infrared energy--which impacts the primary means for the cooling of the planet--radiation. It's proven by ice core samples that CO2 levels were fairly level for a long long time up until the 1800's, where concentration has grown almost exponentially. Even the oil giants will admit it in their studies!
We're using up gobs of energy that was stored up a long long time ago, which necessarily produces heat (except for energy derived from natural events which we have no control over, such as hydro, wind, geothermal, etc.--but most of our power comes from coal, oil and gas). Yearly consumption, by the way, is on the order of ~500 exajoules today. That's a buttload of energy, and if the earth can't get rid of it by radiating, it's just not gonna happen. If radiating ability is significantly impaired, we lose. Once it gets hot enough, water vapor will start to have much the same impact as the CO2. The cycle could literally run away and blow up in our faces, for all we know. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. I can't say, but many scientists have a pretty good idea of what will happen, but it's possible that they know what will happen about as well as anyone else... So, why stack all your chips and throw the ball into the roulette wheel without giving it a real good thought?
So, it's a two forked problem, we're pumping out tons of energy such that the planet has never experienced before, and we ARE impairing it's ability to radiate, as far as we can tell. History can't account for today, and for mankind--and we must tread cautiously because of that. It's true that there are climatic changes over the course of thousands of years, no argument there. But there were no humans driving their H2's around back then. A few degrees over the course of a couple hundred years are particularly worrying in the grand scheme of things, and sticking your head in the ground is the worst kind of solution!
Heh, I just googled on a whim "rumsfeld.swf"... Bingo! I spent like an hour looking for it the other day, and didn't turn up anything! Hah, I guess that's the way it goes. I even sent moveon.org a note through their webmail, and they didn't do anything! Anyway, here it is:
omfg teh lies!
I'm super glad someone saved it, it's too good to go missing! Enjoy!
You're right. I studied desert ecosystems before I changed my direction in college. They are quite sensitive, and over millions of years many of the little critters in those areas have become quite dependant on very certian conditions, and very precise timing of monsoons and changes of the season--which greenhouse warming is bound to affect drastically anyway.
I say put these collectors as individual units in people's yards--if they agree--and give them a percentage off their electricity bills as lease for the land. They get the power to run their AC for free, and they contribute to the power grid, win/win.. It's basically the same deal with cell towers. We have one on one of our properties, and we get $2,000 a month for it. Best tenants we've ever had, I must say!
Of course, they'd have to be almost completely maintance free so you don't need a horde of technicians running all over fixing them. In this way, the environmental impact will be mitigated, as there are already people in the area with houses and paving and all of that... But that's good also because distributed power grids are much more reliable (and probably more efficient) than grids depending on only a few sources.
This could be quite popular all over the southwest if it were economically feasible.
Gov't agencies get downsized and eliminated too.
And for my next trick I'll make monkeys fly out of my butt!
Yeah, and that's also the reason Clear Channel pumps up the bass on their broadcasts, as far as I can figure... To make people with sad-ass stereos happy.
Seriosuly, even the female on one of my long time favorite morning shows spikes down in the 100Hz area after they fuck with it, and she's a 4 foot nothin asian lady, but she soulds like she's an 8' tall amazon. The guys on the show sound like barry white, and I've met them personally--they sound normal! Normal talking voice should not come through the subwoofer with an 80Hz filter! It's not natrual. Practically nobody sounds that way, and if they do they're probably deformed!
It pisses me off to no end because I have to adjust my EQ if I want to listen to them (and not have my brains turned to liquid, mind you)--and I don't like to do that, I really like to keep my stereo's levels balanced!
Oh well, since they've turned libertarian and started shouting at kids to "get off my damn lawn!" they're not so fun to listen to anymore.
I've had the H120 for a little over two years, plays oggs fine. If it had a decent interface I'd be really happy. But I'd be even more happy if the USB port didn't decide to stop functioning a few months ago. Gotta take it apart to get some new music on it. Grrr!
Seriously, I dunno what happened to it. Never been dropped or abused or anything like that.
Racing games don't need to look shiny to be good racing games, you know why? Because you're almost always focusing almost all your attention right at the center of the screen... Just about like you do when you're racing in real life, or just driving down the highway, for that matter.
Aside from looking in your mirrors your peripheral vision takes care of the rest, and if you're not focusing mostly in a 20 degree cone when you're doing better than 200 km/h, well, you're toast.
Even if all of that stuff was displayed perfectly, you're just not going to see it. It's total information overload--unless you're some superhuman with brain bandwidth that can handle it, in which case you'd probably make a fantastic race car driver, and you wouldn't need or want for simulations.
The grandparent is absolutely right, as long as a sim gives you the impression that you're doing something and you're having fun, then so what about the eyecandy? One of the most realistic flight sims I've ever played was the Harrier sim on Apples in the early 90's and it's not because it was pretty--I've played sims that were more detailed graphically even at the time--but because it REALLY made you feel like you were flying a Harrier. That's what it's all about afterall. If someone can acheive that in a 500kb executable, all the more power to them.