Like Atari says - you should keep up with the times, and get an Nvidia graphics card. I was an ATI guy for years, but ATI has fallen by the wayside for lack of support on Linux.
Anyone who needs an optimization guide can just go to Black Viper's site. I actually reference back to him sometimes. He's pretty much got it all, no need to pay a single dime to some dummy who will likely mess things up for you.
Intern shows up one morning, with a couple sticks of memory in his hand, and addresses the IT chief. "Hey, boss - my machine really runs slow, and everyone knows that 512 meg of memory isn't enough to run any modern operating system. How about we add this gig of memory to the old machine, and see how it runs?"
I'll bet dollars to pennies that the IT guy says, "Can you do it yourself, boy? All my people are busy. Get it done, and get out of my hair."
I could envy you. Actually, I have been in similar situations in the past. But, I could still envy you. Sitting at a table, with a bunch of people talking shop around me, discussing things that were slightly over my head, to things entirely outside my limited understanding of the world. Yes, it's a great experience.
But, you will agree with me that these people are people who have gone places, and done things. First off, they obviously got an education. Whether a formal education, or informal education, they have spent the time to study, and to learn. Secondly, they are interested in their field of work. Talking shop with the dullards who show up to get a paycheck is entirely different from talking shop with motivated, excited people who are on a mission to make something work. They are doing something. I have spent countles hours, on various jobs over the years, just sitting with my mouth shut, listening to such people talk. Now and then, I might ask a question - and often times, I would go to the library (before internet) or google to find more understanding when I got home.
That kind of stuff really is exciting.
These days, I don't have those experiences. The work force around me lacks motivation, excitement, and sometimes it seems they even lack a reason for existence. The guys I mentioned whom I bullshit with, but don't want to go drinking with? These are guys who generally do the very minimum work to get by, then go hide from management to avoid getting any more work thrown at them. My shop is one of those where management and labor play that stupid adversarial game. Management pretty well sucks, but the labor force hardly deserves any better because they are ONLY there for the paycheck.
Me? I like my work, and I take my time, doing the best job I know how to do. No matter how big or how small the task at hand, I do it, and do it well, because I take pride in my work.
Given a few co-workers with a similar attitude, I could make freinds, and become interested in them. And, we could find a lot more to talk about at lunch than sports and sex.
Til then? Mehhh. I just can't find it in me to mingle with the unwashed masses of sheep or cattle that I find myself surrounded with.
"So what happens to all the unskilled labor in the US?"
Correct - but the problem is even worse than that. Skilled labor is drying up. Try to get an apprenticeship in any skilled trade today. Carpentry, masonry, iron working, plumbing and/or pipefitting - you name it. I am a journeyman carpenter, among other things. Today, journeymen are working for less than carpenter's helpers worked for in 1990. At least here, in my area, this is true. Blame most of that on the influx of illegal aliens, blame part of it on the outsourcing of other jobs, and apportion the rest of the blame wherever you will.
Face it, Pal. There are indeed at least ten morons for every one person who has a clue. Look around you. Your family. Your neighbors. Your coworkers. People you bump into. You can't always recognize them at first meeting, but as you get to know them, chances are they are idiots.
Alright, now. Let me address those who are NOT complete idiots. I have different sets of experiences. I lived at sea for 5 years, for instance. I served in the military for 8 years, total. That's a big chunk of life, even at my age. I've worked construction for another big chunk of my life. I've drive truck for another big part of my life. Guess what? NO ONE at work shares any of those experiences. Their interests, their experiences, their lives are so different from my own - in general, I'm just not interested in much that they have to say.
I socialize with my immediate boss, to some extent, because we happen to share some life experience. (She's an old broad, we remember a lot of the same things from our childhoods, despite growing up about 1500 miles apart.) I socialize to a limited extent with a few of the guys. I don't want to go out drinking with them, but we'll bullshit together. They have mostly lived a rougher life than the protected little weenies who work around us. We can find some stuff in common.
The rest? I should socialize for the sake of being a nice guy? I mean, really. What do I have in common with some weenie who graduated from school twenty years after me, and has never done anythng but work production? I mean, nothing. No travel, no military, no scuba diving, no camping or exploring the outback of nowhere, nothing that I find exciting. Oh, I could talk tech with them - but they don't know tech from horse carriages. No common experience, nothing to talk about.
I could probably build a bridge if I wanted to talk sports, but sports bore me to fucking tears. Women? Phhht. If there's nothing else to discuss, that even gets old after awhile.
So, to hell with socializing. I'll be nice at work, and withhold my general contempt for all the do-nothings that I work with. And, I'll continue being my asocial self. Not antisocial, but asocial. I get enough companionship at home, thank you.
Good point or good question. The fact is, there are multiple licenses, and it has often been pointed out that the BSD licenses are most freindly to people who wish to commercialize their code. It often seems that people forget that little fact, instead ass-uming that "open source" has to comply with one or more GPL licenses, which is less freindly to commercialization.
Open Sound Systems is another that has open sourced their code, but at the same time, maintain development on a commercial product. In fact, they seem to pretty regularly release their second oldest version to open source, while they continue to keep their newest version closed, and under development.
Virtual Box did pretty much the same, even before they were bought up by Sun, then passed to Oracle. Their scheme of releases is quite different from Open Sound, but the idea is similar, in that they reserve the rights to their newest, most advanced version.
If I thought for awhile, I could probably come up with a lot more companies with similar strategies.
Uhh, I'm afraid that you are dreaming, more than anyone else here. How 'bout a guick list of the comanies most likely to form such a consortium, who actually have the money to do forced hostile takeovers? I think the wealthiest company that is freindly to open source is IBM, but they have their own ideas on open source. Then, there's Oracle, with their Open Office and Java - oh, wait. Not really that freindly, right? Going down the list - well, there's Red Hat. Wonder how large a company they could eat in a hostile takeover? Then there are dozens of second stringers, most of which are just getting by.
I like your idea, and it makes for a whole bunch of pipe dreams, but unless the government open sources the mints so that we can print our own money, this aint' gonna happen.
Nice elitest attitude. In effect, what you've said is, "It's alright to ship away laborer's jobs, and give them to Chinese who work cheaply. But, I can't believe that our companies are giving away the stuff that us intellectual snobs have slaved over! It's unfair, I tell you!"
You, who have no compassion for the average working Joe on the street, deserve to lose your precious Intellectual Property. I'll dance with glee when the day comes that you can't make a mortgage payment, and the bank decides to make you homeless.
"Legalizing meth or heroin, on the other hand, would be like "legalizing" ricin or anthrax."
Invalid argument.
Meth, heroine, and other recreational drugs appeal to a bunch of no-brain losers whose sole interest is in frying their own brains, and eventually their other internal organs.
Ricin and anthrax appeal to a completely different set of people, whose interests involve stopping the hearts of huge masses of people.
Oh yeah - heroine. I injured myself a week ago. The first thing the people in the ER wanted to do, was to inject me with a heroine derivative. I argued a bit, got drowsy, and lost the argument. And, you know what? That shit only gives me a mild headache. Not surprising - I never got high when I tried Mary J either. Whatever - if my neighbor wants to shoot up, I'm not going to bother him, unless and until he comes to my house to steal the money for his habit.
"cowering" behind my chosen pseudonym, I'll point out that there are many laws, in many countries, including the US of A, that threaten the freedom of expression. Some of those laws affect usage of the internet. Some people may have immoral reasons for hiding behind a spoofed mac address, while others may have quite moral reasons for doing so. You have to decide who the "terrorists" and who the "freedom fighters" really are, for yourself.
OR, you can just trust your gubbermint, or buggermint, which ever it is, to decide for you. If you happen to be average, mainstream, unadventurous, and boring - you can probably blend in and just get along. However, if one day, one of your interests happens to flag you as "dangerous", it will be far to late for you to become even passingly "anonymous".
Oh - your shadow? I think I see it. It's almost high enough to cover the sole of my left boot.
While I'm here, let's discuss that "cowering" business. Almost everyone, myself included, knows that if we really raise any flags, the gubbermint has the means to come and find us. As do a number of agencies and organizations. It's a matter of resoruces, and knowhow. But, using a pseudonym keeps the general riffraff from making a nuisance of itself. Little things, like nuisance phone calls in the middle of the night. No one on the intartubes knows my number, so they can't call. And, since Runaway1956 has never signed a contract with any telco, his number can't be easily looked up. The advantage of that is - if someone DOES telephone me, and ask for Runaway1956, I know that I'm in danger and need to take action.
If Joe Random Assassin should telephone you in the middle of the night, and ask for Mr. Michael Krsitopeit, will that raise any alarms for you?
I may be slightly paranoid, but that doesn't mean that there are no nuts in the world who might want to kill me for my opinions.
You see the stories all the time, or the raids are taking place in your one-horse town all the time? Your post isn't real clear on that point.
Busts are made every day, somewhere in the world. So, it's not surprising that you, in your small city, can see them every day. However, if kiddie porn busts are made in your city/county/minicipality every day, then there is something wrong. An overzealous law enforcement, OR, you live in an area desely populated with low-life scummy predators.
You don't live on the Utah/Arizona border, do you?
Perhaps an image would work for you? You can see the wireless page of my modem, with the model number, four different configurable wireless networks, and the speed limiting selector beneath.
My modem isn't even the latest and greatest of Netgear's routers. I only wish that I knew how to root the damned thing, and configure my bandwidth even better than it is. I have a kid who likes to watch movies, and doesn't give a damn how much of Dad's bandwidth is eaten up with them. I've put his mac address on "lowest" priority, and my own on "highest" - but those damned movies still interfere with me sometimes!
Shhhh - don't say "Allen-Bradley" and "rogue" in the same sentence like that. We have thousands of A-B's and only a few dozen Siemens PLC's. Give me Stuxnet, please!
The reading that I've done on that subject included words to the effect, "Drive the Jews into the sea". I believe that GP may have inserted his own words with that "wipe off the map", or some author interpreted that before he read it.
You didn't get your tablet? You must be a bad, bad, bad boy, or God would have given you one. Have you been worshipping false idols or something? All of MY freinds have their tablets. And, I wouldn't leave the house without mine!
What else do you have to do all day? What - you're going to miss a day or six of slashdot reading? Get off yer lazy arse and get to work updating those machines!
BTW - I've been in a lot of production plants in my lifetime. I mean, a lot. You'll be hard pressed to find a list of plants with 25,000 machines doing similar jobs, all requiring the same or similar updates. Perhaps some corporation like General Motors has that many machines spread out across it's corporate landscape, including spare replacements in warehouses.
Do you have such devices? I don't have any at my worksite. Everything is serial. Assuming you do communicate between devices via USB - how difficult would it be to use a serial?
Plugging a USB device into a machine that you're not supposed to plug it into is not a "mistake", it is vandalism, theft, or worse, industrial espionage. For that reason, USB should just be disabled on company computers, unless the USB is truly essential to it's operation. And, I haven't seen a machine yet where USB was essential. Fingerprint scanner, maybe? Get a scanner that plugs into the serial port, FFS!
And, there are people who can't figure out why so many of us switch to a Unix-like operating system. Tolerating compromised systems is NOT a fact of life with BSD, Debian, Ubuntu, Redhat, Fedora, Suse - or even Mac. (Unless of course, you believe all the rumors about Apple tracking users!)
On the bright side, Microsoft really has been improving their systems. Security on W95/98/ME was nonexistent. Security improved slightly from W2k to XP, then again on Vista/Win7. Just maybe Win8 will actually be secure. I'm not betting on it, but they really should improve again.
I'm an "older people". Guess what - it was older people who built the first PC's. In fact, all the people who created the first operating systems are older people now. We made your apps, your games, your everything.
Alright, I'll make an effort to be fair here. Probably 20% of the people my age have never owned a PC, and never will. Another large percentage has never done anything with a PC other than check email, play a couple of games, and maybe read Fox News headlines. Many of the rest have never diddled in the registry, and have almost no idea how to diagnose or cure a virus problem - that's all automatic with the version of Norton shipped on the computer from Dell (or HP or Gateway or) and if that doesn't take care of it then the computer shop can fix it.
But, it isn't just older people. I can find a few dozen youngsters (25 and younger) who have no clue about the internal workings of a computer just as easily as older people. No freaking clue.
Older people. Phhht. Wait 'til you're an octogenarian, and the young pukes are making fun of you. Ha! More, I hope you live to be 120, and you have to tolerate the condescending bullshit from the kids for all of your last 40 years or more.
I believe that you recall correctly. However - our mutinous space sailors won't have much doubt that they know where they are going. Mars is up there, they can see it, unlike Columbus' crews, who could not see the "New World", or India, or much of anything for that matter.
Lethal? Not necessarily. A hybrid launching system could be used for manned launches. Put the ship inside the gun, activate the gun at a reduced power setting, and the ship begins moving up the track. As the ship exits the track, rockets kick in to finish lifting into orbit. There is still a considerable energy expenditure, but we could eliminate that first stage rocket - or more likely, keep the first stage rocket, and arrive in orbit with that second (or third) stage fuel tank available for maneuvering.
I can't remember for sure who first suggested that idea, but I want to say that it was Arthur C. Clark.
Slashdot Mirror
Like Atari says - you should keep up with the times, and get an Nvidia graphics card. I was an ATI guy for years, but ATI has fallen by the wayside for lack of support on Linux.
Anyone who needs an optimization guide can just go to Black Viper's site. I actually reference back to him sometimes. He's pretty much got it all, no need to pay a single dime to some dummy who will likely mess things up for you.
Intern shows up one morning, with a couple sticks of memory in his hand, and addresses the IT chief. "Hey, boss - my machine really runs slow, and everyone knows that 512 meg of memory isn't enough to run any modern operating system. How about we add this gig of memory to the old machine, and see how it runs?"
I'll bet dollars to pennies that the IT guy says, "Can you do it yourself, boy? All my people are busy. Get it done, and get out of my hair."
Unless, of course, your guerillas also weigh 800 pounds. Sumo guerillas, anyone?
I could envy you. Actually, I have been in similar situations in the past. But, I could still envy you. Sitting at a table, with a bunch of people talking shop around me, discussing things that were slightly over my head, to things entirely outside my limited understanding of the world. Yes, it's a great experience.
But, you will agree with me that these people are people who have gone places, and done things. First off, they obviously got an education. Whether a formal education, or informal education, they have spent the time to study, and to learn. Secondly, they are interested in their field of work. Talking shop with the dullards who show up to get a paycheck is entirely different from talking shop with motivated, excited people who are on a mission to make something work. They are doing something. I have spent countles hours, on various jobs over the years, just sitting with my mouth shut, listening to such people talk. Now and then, I might ask a question - and often times, I would go to the library (before internet) or google to find more understanding when I got home.
That kind of stuff really is exciting.
These days, I don't have those experiences. The work force around me lacks motivation, excitement, and sometimes it seems they even lack a reason for existence. The guys I mentioned whom I bullshit with, but don't want to go drinking with? These are guys who generally do the very minimum work to get by, then go hide from management to avoid getting any more work thrown at them. My shop is one of those where management and labor play that stupid adversarial game. Management pretty well sucks, but the labor force hardly deserves any better because they are ONLY there for the paycheck.
Me? I like my work, and I take my time, doing the best job I know how to do. No matter how big or how small the task at hand, I do it, and do it well, because I take pride in my work.
Given a few co-workers with a similar attitude, I could make freinds, and become interested in them. And, we could find a lot more to talk about at lunch than sports and sex.
Til then? Mehhh. I just can't find it in me to mingle with the unwashed masses of sheep or cattle that I find myself surrounded with.
"You're an asshat."
No, sonny, I'm an asshole. Asshats are generally 12 to 30 years old. I'm senior to any asshat. And, that's MISTER Asshole to you.
I do appreciate the near recognition, though. Now, get off the lawn.
"So what happens to all the unskilled labor in the US?"
Correct - but the problem is even worse than that. Skilled labor is drying up. Try to get an apprenticeship in any skilled trade today. Carpentry, masonry, iron working, plumbing and/or pipefitting - you name it. I am a journeyman carpenter, among other things. Today, journeymen are working for less than carpenter's helpers worked for in 1990. At least here, in my area, this is true. Blame most of that on the influx of illegal aliens, blame part of it on the outsourcing of other jobs, and apportion the rest of the blame wherever you will.
Face it, Pal. There are indeed at least ten morons for every one person who has a clue. Look around you. Your family. Your neighbors. Your coworkers. People you bump into. You can't always recognize them at first meeting, but as you get to know them, chances are they are idiots.
Alright, now. Let me address those who are NOT complete idiots. I have different sets of experiences. I lived at sea for 5 years, for instance. I served in the military for 8 years, total. That's a big chunk of life, even at my age. I've worked construction for another big chunk of my life. I've drive truck for another big part of my life. Guess what? NO ONE at work shares any of those experiences. Their interests, their experiences, their lives are so different from my own - in general, I'm just not interested in much that they have to say.
I socialize with my immediate boss, to some extent, because we happen to share some life experience. (She's an old broad, we remember a lot of the same things from our childhoods, despite growing up about 1500 miles apart.) I socialize to a limited extent with a few of the guys. I don't want to go out drinking with them, but we'll bullshit together. They have mostly lived a rougher life than the protected little weenies who work around us. We can find some stuff in common.
The rest? I should socialize for the sake of being a nice guy? I mean, really. What do I have in common with some weenie who graduated from school twenty years after me, and has never done anythng but work production? I mean, nothing. No travel, no military, no scuba diving, no camping or exploring the outback of nowhere, nothing that I find exciting. Oh, I could talk tech with them - but they don't know tech from horse carriages. No common experience, nothing to talk about.
I could probably build a bridge if I wanted to talk sports, but sports bore me to fucking tears. Women? Phhht. If there's nothing else to discuss, that even gets old after awhile.
So, to hell with socializing. I'll be nice at work, and withhold my general contempt for all the do-nothings that I work with. And, I'll continue being my asocial self. Not antisocial, but asocial. I get enough companionship at home, thank you.
Good point or good question. The fact is, there are multiple licenses, and it has often been pointed out that the BSD licenses are most freindly to people who wish to commercialize their code. It often seems that people forget that little fact, instead ass-uming that "open source" has to comply with one or more GPL licenses, which is less freindly to commercialization.
Open Sound Systems is another that has open sourced their code, but at the same time, maintain development on a commercial product. In fact, they seem to pretty regularly release their second oldest version to open source, while they continue to keep their newest version closed, and under development.
Virtual Box did pretty much the same, even before they were bought up by Sun, then passed to Oracle. Their scheme of releases is quite different from Open Sound, but the idea is similar, in that they reserve the rights to their newest, most advanced version.
If I thought for awhile, I could probably come up with a lot more companies with similar strategies.
Uhh, I'm afraid that you are dreaming, more than anyone else here. How 'bout a guick list of the comanies most likely to form such a consortium, who actually have the money to do forced hostile takeovers? I think the wealthiest company that is freindly to open source is IBM, but they have their own ideas on open source. Then, there's Oracle, with their Open Office and Java - oh, wait. Not really that freindly, right? Going down the list - well, there's Red Hat. Wonder how large a company they could eat in a hostile takeover? Then there are dozens of second stringers, most of which are just getting by.
I like your idea, and it makes for a whole bunch of pipe dreams, but unless the government open sources the mints so that we can print our own money, this aint' gonna happen.
Nice elitest attitude. In effect, what you've said is, "It's alright to ship away laborer's jobs, and give them to Chinese who work cheaply. But, I can't believe that our companies are giving away the stuff that us intellectual snobs have slaved over! It's unfair, I tell you!"
You, who have no compassion for the average working Joe on the street, deserve to lose your precious Intellectual Property. I'll dance with glee when the day comes that you can't make a mortgage payment, and the bank decides to make you homeless.
"Intellectual property" my ass.
"Legalizing meth or heroin, on the other hand, would be like "legalizing" ricin or anthrax."
Invalid argument.
Meth, heroine, and other recreational drugs appeal to a bunch of no-brain losers whose sole interest is in frying their own brains, and eventually their other internal organs.
Ricin and anthrax appeal to a completely different set of people, whose interests involve stopping the hearts of huge masses of people.
Oh yeah - heroine. I injured myself a week ago. The first thing the people in the ER wanted to do, was to inject me with a heroine derivative. I argued a bit, got drowsy, and lost the argument. And, you know what? That shit only gives me a mild headache. Not surprising - I never got high when I tried Mary J either. Whatever - if my neighbor wants to shoot up, I'm not going to bother him, unless and until he comes to my house to steal the money for his habit.
"cowering" behind my chosen pseudonym, I'll point out that there are many laws, in many countries, including the US of A, that threaten the freedom of expression. Some of those laws affect usage of the internet. Some people may have immoral reasons for hiding behind a spoofed mac address, while others may have quite moral reasons for doing so. You have to decide who the "terrorists" and who the "freedom fighters" really are, for yourself.
OR, you can just trust your gubbermint, or buggermint, which ever it is, to decide for you. If you happen to be average, mainstream, unadventurous, and boring - you can probably blend in and just get along. However, if one day, one of your interests happens to flag you as "dangerous", it will be far to late for you to become even passingly "anonymous".
Oh - your shadow? I think I see it. It's almost high enough to cover the sole of my left boot.
While I'm here, let's discuss that "cowering" business. Almost everyone, myself included, knows that if we really raise any flags, the gubbermint has the means to come and find us. As do a number of agencies and organizations. It's a matter of resoruces, and knowhow. But, using a pseudonym keeps the general riffraff from making a nuisance of itself. Little things, like nuisance phone calls in the middle of the night. No one on the intartubes knows my number, so they can't call. And, since Runaway1956 has never signed a contract with any telco, his number can't be easily looked up. The advantage of that is - if someone DOES telephone me, and ask for Runaway1956, I know that I'm in danger and need to take action.
If Joe Random Assassin should telephone you in the middle of the night, and ask for Mr. Michael Krsitopeit, will that raise any alarms for you?
I may be slightly paranoid, but that doesn't mean that there are no nuts in the world who might want to kill me for my opinions.
You see the stories all the time, or the raids are taking place in your one-horse town all the time? Your post isn't real clear on that point.
Busts are made every day, somewhere in the world. So, it's not surprising that you, in your small city, can see them every day. However, if kiddie porn busts are made in your city/county/minicipality every day, then there is something wrong. An overzealous law enforcement, OR, you live in an area desely populated with low-life scummy predators.
You don't live on the Utah/Arizona border, do you?
Perhaps an image would work for you? You can see the wireless page of my modem, with the model number, four different configurable wireless networks, and the speed limiting selector beneath.
http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc226/Runaway1956/multi_wifi.png
My modem isn't even the latest and greatest of Netgear's routers. I only wish that I knew how to root the damned thing, and configure my bandwidth even better than it is. I have a kid who likes to watch movies, and doesn't give a damn how much of Dad's bandwidth is eaten up with them. I've put his mac address on "lowest" priority, and my own on "highest" - but those damned movies still interfere with me sometimes!
Shhhh - don't say "Allen-Bradley" and "rogue" in the same sentence like that. We have thousands of A-B's and only a few dozen Siemens PLC's. Give me Stuxnet, please!
The reading that I've done on that subject included words to the effect, "Drive the Jews into the sea". I believe that GP may have inserted his own words with that "wipe off the map", or some author interpreted that before he read it.
You didn't get your tablet? You must be a bad, bad, bad boy, or God would have given you one. Have you been worshipping false idols or something? All of MY freinds have their tablets. And, I wouldn't leave the house without mine!
What else do you have to do all day? What - you're going to miss a day or six of slashdot reading? Get off yer lazy arse and get to work updating those machines!
BTW - I've been in a lot of production plants in my lifetime. I mean, a lot. You'll be hard pressed to find a list of plants with 25,000 machines doing similar jobs, all requiring the same or similar updates. Perhaps some corporation like General Motors has that many machines spread out across it's corporate landscape, including spare replacements in warehouses.
Do you have such devices? I don't have any at my worksite. Everything is serial. Assuming you do communicate between devices via USB - how difficult would it be to use a serial?
Plugging a USB device into a machine that you're not supposed to plug it into is not a "mistake", it is vandalism, theft, or worse, industrial espionage. For that reason, USB should just be disabled on company computers, unless the USB is truly essential to it's operation. And, I haven't seen a machine yet where USB was essential. Fingerprint scanner, maybe? Get a scanner that plugs into the serial port, FFS!
"for desktop use this is a fact of life."
And, there are people who can't figure out why so many of us switch to a Unix-like operating system. Tolerating compromised systems is NOT a fact of life with BSD, Debian, Ubuntu, Redhat, Fedora, Suse - or even Mac. (Unless of course, you believe all the rumors about Apple tracking users!)
On the bright side, Microsoft really has been improving their systems. Security on W95/98/ME was nonexistent. Security improved slightly from W2k to XP, then again on Vista/Win7. Just maybe Win8 will actually be secure. I'm not betting on it, but they really should improve again.
I'm an "older people". Guess what - it was older people who built the first PC's. In fact, all the people who created the first operating systems are older people now. We made your apps, your games, your everything.
Alright, I'll make an effort to be fair here. Probably 20% of the people my age have never owned a PC, and never will. Another large percentage has never done anything with a PC other than check email, play a couple of games, and maybe read Fox News headlines. Many of the rest have never diddled in the registry, and have almost no idea how to diagnose or cure a virus problem - that's all automatic with the version of Norton shipped on the computer from Dell (or HP or Gateway or) and if that doesn't take care of it then the computer shop can fix it.
But, it isn't just older people. I can find a few dozen youngsters (25 and younger) who have no clue about the internal workings of a computer just as easily as older people. No freaking clue.
Older people. Phhht. Wait 'til you're an octogenarian, and the young pukes are making fun of you. Ha! More, I hope you live to be 120, and you have to tolerate the condescending bullshit from the kids for all of your last 40 years or more.
I believe that you recall correctly. However - our mutinous space sailors won't have much doubt that they know where they are going. Mars is up there, they can see it, unlike Columbus' crews, who could not see the "New World", or India, or much of anything for that matter.
Lethal? Not necessarily. A hybrid launching system could be used for manned launches. Put the ship inside the gun, activate the gun at a reduced power setting, and the ship begins moving up the track. As the ship exits the track, rockets kick in to finish lifting into orbit. There is still a considerable energy expenditure, but we could eliminate that first stage rocket - or more likely, keep the first stage rocket, and arrive in orbit with that second (or third) stage fuel tank available for maneuvering.
I can't remember for sure who first suggested that idea, but I want to say that it was Arthur C. Clark.