I guess it is neat, except that you are storing 128x128 bitmaps for icons! I can see that adding up -real- quick. Also that will hit low-mem machines bigtime. Not smart.
It is a simple case of deduction. Uri Geller is psychic, so he knows what will be the outcome. He wouldn't have placed the suit if he knew he would not win.
So we can all go home now...lawyers step aside, he is obviously more than you can handle.
... now I have no problem with the current system, "Search Engines" (hehe), but the average person would like a place he can go online to just browse what's available and say "Ooh that looks nice, I think I'll get that..." rather than knowing beforehand what he needs.
Take a look at Linuxberg and tell me what you think. It follows the basic layout of the venerable TUCOWS...because it is a subsiderary of Tucows. One can point their browser to this page with the eager hopes of finding a word processor for X, and need only navigate simple catagorized lists.
The fun difference for these new Linux users will be that 99.9999% of the software is completely free, no strings, and doesn't have a little "Buy Now!!" tag next to it.:)
I have not come across that problem. I recently moved into the southwest Michigan area, and was surprised when I had several independant people ask me to help install Linux for them.
One of them, as you would expect, is not only a computer hobbiest, but a CS major. The other two however hardly even fall into the "tool" catagory. I had to sadly turn down one request, because after seeing how much she knew about computers, and what she used them for, I knew that there was no way her+Linux were a compatible couple. She only wanted it because she had heard about that new trendy thingy that is different from Windows.
I find an increasingly large number of people who have heard of Linux, and are interested in trying it, who would typically be viewed as 'iMac' individuals.
That may be true for default settings, but who actually uses those? (Other than clueless newbies). Nobody just installs RedHat or some other arbitrary distribution, and then plops it down as a page spitter with the default configs.
So then, the question is which is more capable of security once tuned since everybody is going to be tuning it. Also, importantly, how easy is it to tune?
That is something that goes out of my depths because I have no experience with OpenBSD. I do know that simply declaring Linux insecure based on default settings is a bit unfair.
One thing that I have seen everybody neglect to mention about apt-get is the method in which it downloads software.
One of the most frustrating things with RedHat as I remember was installing complex packages. My worst experience was installing Gnome on Redhat 5.2 Back then Gnome was not a standard part of the distro and it required ---ALOT--- of packages from all over the world to be downloaded and installed in the correct order. I got so frustrated at one point that I removed all of the RPMs and just installed using sources which was documented much better.
Then I switched to debian one day and got the notion to try out Gnome again, so I typed,with an almost joking manner:
# apt-get install gnome
and gawked when I saw that it knew every single package I would need to download(from ONE mirror), listed them for me, and then asked me if I wanted to continue, telling me about how long it would take to get everything. A few minutes later with absolutely -no- intervention I had Gnome up and running on my system, complete with full documentation so I could get started and working with it.
Once you do that, there is no turning back. I still try out other distributions from time to time just to see where the market is, for instance I tried out Corel Linux on my other partition. They are coming along, but nothing beats Debian when it comes to power and stability. With RPM I find myself banging the keyboard in frustration way too often, searching the internet high and low for some hard to find required RPM on somebodies low-bandwith server.
-Disclaimer, I havn't done anything with Gnome recently, the last time I tried apt-getting it was about a year ago. (I don't care for DEs very much, I just wanted to try it.) Your results may not be as good as mine were.
Few pointers that may help you out. There is a file in/etc/apt called 'sources.list' In this file there are URLs where the application 'apt-get' will look for.deb files. What you would do, if you wanted incremental updates, would be to point those at the _unstable_ branches instead of stable. You could then do a huge overall upgrade, or simply download the newest apps you want. Apt itself will take care of all the dependancies and installation.
For the most part this solves what you are talking about. The reason that Debain is always so 'behind' is because they put much more emphasis on distribution stability than other distributions do. They cross test packages and whatnot making sure everything is inter-compatible before releasing. This ensures a rock solid distribution, albiet a tad bit out of date.
Hope that helped out a bit. Debian isn't for everybody. It certainly is not the easiest to use. But the features that really make it shine in my opinion is the power of apt, and the dpkg system, automatic menu updating with debian adjusted window managers, among other things.
Incorrect, your biased assumption about me being biased was humorous.
If you'll take a rather precursory glance around the game industry you will see that -most- hightech hyped up games have been pushed out the door. They are marketing machines, dumbed down for the lowest common denominator. Good example of this? Pax. Pax was supposed to be one of the best star strat games made. What happened to it? The corporation. Since it takes alot of money to make these high-tech games, it takes a corporation to fund it. And where there is that, there is committees.
Typically if you look at hobbiest games. Games created by game lovers for game lovers, you'll find better game play.
Typically
It has nothing to do with open source (though that always helps) it has nothing to do with angry sentimentalism. Just common sense. So think a bit before you flame next time.
Choices. You have them. If you want to play the latest games then you'll have to keep your machine up to date. That is how it has always been. Scads of people seem to do this. I don't really see the necessity or point in such behavior. I enjoy playing games with more depth than these. Typically those types of game run on nearly every computer. (see Stars!)
There are plenty of great games being produced for the lowest common denominator. You just don't hear about them because they don't have the same marketing/media hype that these high-tech games have.
I still don't see why you are complaining so much though. My computer seems to run Quake3test just fine with all the options turned on, and it is over a year and a half old now which is quite old for gaming standards. I may or may not purchase the game, I can't justify spending 60 bucks on something I'll use for a month. The only reason I would purchase it is to support id and Carmack. I bought the old Linux version of Quake for exactly that reason. I applaud their foresight.
Don't forget the fact that when you use debian packages to install software it will automatically update the root menus of all debian compliant window-managers and enviroments. This saves lots of time reconfiguring menu rc files, expecially if you are a compulsive WM switcher like I am.
Seriously, by the time this technology gets to a point where it could be used, I don't think we'll be using moniters and keyboards. I imagine such computers could be implanted right into the human body, working with the optical nerves and what not.
Please take what I say with a -lot- of salt because I know very little about this topic. However I think that what we are looking at here is more of a biological or chemical process. In other words, they arn't sending currents of electricty as we know it down the wires. In fact the word 'wire' is just a way to understand a similarity in function.s is the case then sheilding would not be a problem?
Well you can't really expect things like that to change over night. Remember that Linux is still not an optimum gaming enviroment. Expecially for all of those whiz-bang graphix fest games that most people seem to enjoy these days.
I'll always be a fan of the less commercialized games. These are the ones where you find devoted fans playing them for decades. Things like Stars! and VGAplanets. I'd rather see those games ported.
There is the problem, everybody wants something different, and there is only a limited number of people who are capabile of porting software, or creating software. You want a certain type of up to date game. Another person wants strategy games. Another wants old fashioned turn based PBEM games. You can't satisfy them all.
Loki seems to be doing an excellent job of mixing their genres around as much as possible so as to at leastget one game out there for each fetish.
But don't lose patience. Id has taken the bold move and is going to be doing exactly what you are requesting. When the rest of the industry sees their success they will be sure to follow lead.
Actually, distributions sometimes offer just what you are looking for. I know, off the top of my head, that RedHat and Debian both have "packages" that have generic images of the latest kernels. You'll have to be proficient with handling modules however because the typical strategy is to include as much as possible modular to satisfy the masses. I know that the debian kernel-image packages are very slick, they install all you need to safely boot up with the new kernel without being too risky about it and allowing you to return to your old kernel if things go bad.
All of you have written very good comments about this situation. However, there is one issue that I havn't seen anyone bring up yet that I think is probably the most important, and saddest detail of this entire deal.
There is much debate over whether the Y2K problem will be a fizzle or a bang. Truth is, there is no way to know until it happens. We can speculate endlessly, but the truth is, you don't know what the company next door is doing about it, and you don't know if what they make is vital to your success or not.
Therefore, it is in the best interest for the world to take things seriously, since the worst possible outcome is indeed -very- serious. The worst possible outcome would be a domino effect of events resulting in a severe step backwards in our technological advancements, perhaps even returning most of the commercialized world to a pre-industrial revolution state.
Now, of course, I'm not saying this will indeed happen. All I'm saying is that we should treat the situation as if that is very possible. If we do that, then we should consider this problem as a global crisis, and worthy of the same treatement that -any- global crisis should receive.
I think, the saddest thing about this whole event is that we have businesses and individuals running around worried more about their monatary acummulations than they are about the welfare of modern mankind. In my opinion this would be similiar to a scientist in a research lab discovering a cheap cure for HIV and then patenting it, restricting its use, and monopolizing on it. In my book such behavior would be criminal.
There comes along, every once in a while, certain inventions and discoveries that should -not- remain under the fists of greedy suits and corporations. In a way, some discoveries should be 'Open Source' if I may use such a poor comparison.
This is all a little melodramatic, I realize that. The sitaution is not as bad as the HIV comparison. What I am more frustrated about here is the -mindset- we have about this. Here we are, facing something as possibly damaging as any other crisis, and all we can think about doing is protecting our material wealth.
It is a sad commentary about the death of capatalism and its idealism, if they ever existed in the first place.
Looking at the track record of games these guys have produced, I'm not too worried about a 'cheap ripoff'
Kingpin looks to have some pretty sophisticated gameplay and interesting AI. I have no doubt that they will find a way to interweave an interesting plot into an old game.
I see these guys have also made Redneck Rampage. Granted this game was not a technological fest, but it was decently up to date. It had a great comedy element that was lacking in alot of games around that time. These guys seems to know how to make a game interesting, so it will be -interesting- to see how it turns out.
Well you would have to consider the size constraints/price constraints. They are probably using laptop tech. drives. As far as I know, laptop drives havn't reached those massive sizes yet. If they have, they are still expensive and you lose your price optimization.
Well that depends on your distribution. With debian Apt all you need to do is type: apt-get install gnome and it will automatically upgrade/install/download everything you need. that is in my opinion far easier than anything i've seen for windows.
One thing that I find particularly clumsy is having to manually tell The Gimp where the alpha border is on layers. Photoshop automatically does this and doesn't allocate the full pixel dimension of the layer to memory. With Gimp you can be lazy and just leave everything full size but then you eat up memory fast. If it was too difficult to automatically do this, even something like allowing the user to resize the yellow border in the window instead of having to rely on guesswork in the layer's pallete would help a ton.
That is all well and good...BUT A> The spaceshuttle is doing that at very extreme altitudes. You can't hear or feel the effects of reentry. When was the last time you heard a shuttle reentering the atmosphere? B> They wern't even using shuttles back then. So your statistics arn't exactly correct. By the time the capsules got low enough to be creating an audible sonic boom, they had already deployed parachutes and were going downward towards the ocean at a very comfortably slow pace. C> Even if the 'shutes wern't deployed the capsule would have long ago ceased lateral(orbital) velocity and would have simply been falling. Thus being only subject to the laws of terminal velocity, which is nowhere near the speed of sound.
As for launching rockets unawares, that is no problem. It takes a relatively simple structure to launch a rocket, there is no reason that the government couldn't have several launch pads in remote areas where they wouldn't be bothered by onlookers. Since these were the days before extensive global satellite moniters and such, it would have been very easy to sneak missions. I have no doubt that missions were sneaked. As to whether or not any moon missions were sneaked, I don't really think that would be the case. You can tell just by the way Armstrong acted when he first stepped on the moon that he was the first. If they had been running several sneaked missions to the moon there would have been *no* reason for them to withhold any information from the Apollo crew, the public maybe, but why keep your crew in the dark if you have information that is important.
A little more than half a year ago I ordered a Debian CD in the mail. It was my first attempt at installing anything linux, I had hardly even heard of it before. I installed it, never could get anything to work. So i tinkered around in the command line for a while, it was fun, took me back to my DOS roots, but I couldn't really do anything productive in it. Well a few months later I got a Redhat CD because I had heard that was easier to install and play with. And in the process came across Redhat's XBF Drivers for my video card, so this time I had X and I got my modem working, etc. Point was I tried, the first time I really didn't. Within the space of 2 months I found myself never booting into my Windows partition. Why? Well to be quite honest I had everything I needed on the linux side And More. At first I missed EI4 because netscape is slow and buggy, but I soon learned to love lynx and now I use nothing else. Every rare once in a while I fire up mozilla m4 when looking for a new theme. Anyways, the point of all this, I'm just an average user. Sure I'm a little more computer savvy then iMac user down the street who just waves his mouse around on the screen like a magic wand. But I'm definatly not your IS expert or CS major. What I use my computer for is for the most part average user tasks, composing short letters, writing email, snooping around on the internet, ect. You know what? Linux does these things better than windows. I like the fact that it feels like I upgraded my computer when I havn't touched a stick of memory. In fact the ironic thing is, Linux is EASIER to use than windows was. Why? Because nothing hardly ever goes wrong with it. In windows I was always having to dink around in a plethora of control panels because something had fritzled out. Now I can leave my computer up for months on end and not a problem in sight. Using linux as a desktop computer is NOT using a flathead screwdriver to unscrew a phillips screw. That is about the piss poor worst analogy I've seen. If anything it is like using a high performance sports car to drive to work. You get lots of extra frills and boosts that you probably can't use all the time, but hey why not! You look 10 times better then everybody else on the road, and if you do need to press the petal to the metal, you don't have to worry about the carborator blowing up or the windsheild blowing off. As well, I find your comment about not liking 'mickeysoft' but going ahead and using it anyways sick. Why support a company that you don't even believe is in the right? Do you have any conception of how hypocritical that sounds? I realize that pretty much all major corporations are bad, and micros~1 just happened to get alot of lime light maybe(I believe them to be worse than average), but you really won't see me supporting many large corporations at all unless it becomes absolutely impossible to not do so. And you know what? I don't suffer for it, in fact I probably make out better not buying name brands. Oh by the way, love the sears vrs craftsman comment, are you insinuating that Linux is a Version of Windows?? Are you one of those shmucks that thinks Redhat 5.2 For Windows is shareware?
You know, your argument is getting old fast. You do realize that it is their job to write reviews and ancedotes on this sight? Therefore, as long as they write on subject in keeping with the things geeks want to hear, they should be able to traverse whatever territory they deem necessary. You see plenty of constructive reviews, articles, and news blurbs here. The comperably few M$-Bashing articles are done for both the enjoyment of the reader and the writer. Get your thumb out of your backdoor and loosen up a little! The society that has harbored the entire Linux upheaval as we know it isn't your typical corporate melodrama. Anybody with a few braincells left after a long weekend can see this. So likewise, don't expect Slashdot to remain in a strict corporate setting.
i don't really consider 200 bucks to be steep for a spline modeller of that calibre. it's rendering engine isn't the greatest, but hey, that is what electric image is for:)
ya i could never use that low of a res on a big moniter. they arn't designed for it anyways, it is no wonder he has an unsharp picture with the 21" if he is using a res that low. i use a 22" with 1600x1200 at work, going home to my poor 17" with 1024x768 is annoying!
Slashdot Mirror
I guess it is neat, except that you are storing 128x128 bitmaps for icons! I can see that adding up -real- quick. Also that will hit low-mem machines bigtime. Not smart.
It is a simple case of deduction. Uri Geller is psychic, so he knows what will be the outcome. He wouldn't have placed the suit if he knew he would not win.
So we can all go home now...lawyers step aside, he is obviously more than you can handle.
... now I have no problem with
:)
the current system, "Search Engines" (hehe), but the average person would like a place he can go online to just
browse what's available and say "Ooh that looks nice, I think I'll get that..." rather than knowing beforehand what he
needs.
Take a look at Linuxberg and tell me what you think. It follows the basic layout of the venerable TUCOWS...because it is a subsiderary of Tucows. One can point their browser to this page with the eager hopes of finding a word processor for X, and need only navigate simple catagorized lists.
The fun difference for these new Linux users will be that 99.9999% of the software is completely free, no strings, and doesn't have a little "Buy Now!!" tag next to it.
I have not come across that problem. I recently moved into the southwest Michigan area, and was surprised when I had several independant people ask me to help install Linux for them.
One of them, as you would expect, is not only a computer hobbiest, but a CS major. The other two however hardly even fall into the "tool" catagory. I had to sadly turn down one request, because after seeing how much she knew about computers, and what she used them for, I knew that there was no way her+Linux were a compatible couple. She only wanted it because she had heard about that new trendy thingy that is different from Windows.
I find an increasingly large number of people who have heard of Linux, and are interested in trying it, who would typically be viewed as 'iMac' individuals.
Must be a local phenom?
That may be true for default settings, but who actually uses those? (Other than clueless newbies). Nobody just installs RedHat or some other arbitrary distribution, and then plops it down as a page spitter with the default configs.
So then, the question is which is more capable of security once tuned since everybody is going to be tuning it. Also, importantly, how easy is it to tune?
That is something that goes out of my depths because I have no experience with OpenBSD. I do know that simply declaring Linux insecure based on default settings is a bit unfair.
One thing that I have seen everybody neglect to mention about apt-get is the method in which it downloads software.
One of the most frustrating things with RedHat as I remember was installing complex packages. My worst experience was installing Gnome on Redhat 5.2 Back then Gnome was not a standard part of the distro and it required ---ALOT--- of packages from all over the world to be downloaded and installed in the correct order. I got so frustrated at one point that I removed all of the RPMs and just installed using sources which was documented much better.
Then I switched to debian one day and got the notion to try out Gnome again, so I typed,with an almost joking manner:
# apt-get install gnome
and gawked when I saw that it knew every single package I would need to download(from ONE mirror), listed them for me, and then asked me if I wanted to continue, telling me about how long it would take to get everything.
A few minutes later with absolutely -no- intervention I had Gnome up and running on my system, complete with full documentation so I could get started and working with it.
Once you do that, there is no turning back. I still try out other distributions from time to time just to see where the market is, for instance I tried out Corel Linux on my other partition. They are coming along, but nothing beats Debian when it comes to power and stability. With RPM I find myself banging the keyboard in frustration way too often, searching the internet high and low for some hard to find required RPM on somebodies low-bandwith server.
-Disclaimer, I havn't done anything with Gnome recently, the last time I tried apt-getting it was about a year ago. (I don't care for DEs very much, I just wanted to try it.) Your results may not be as good as mine were.
Few pointers that may help you out. There is a file in /etc/apt called 'sources.list' In this file there are URLs where the application 'apt-get' will look for .deb files. What you would do, if you wanted incremental updates, would be to point those at the _unstable_ branches instead of stable. You could then do a huge overall upgrade, or simply download the newest apps you want. Apt itself will take care of all the dependancies and installation.
For the most part this solves what you are talking about. The reason that Debain is always so 'behind' is because they put much more emphasis on distribution stability than other distributions do. They cross test packages and whatnot making sure everything is inter-compatible before releasing. This ensures a rock solid distribution, albiet a tad bit out of date.
Hope that helped out a bit. Debian isn't for everybody. It certainly is not the easiest to use. But the features that really make it shine in my opinion is the power of apt, and the dpkg system, automatic menu updating with debian adjusted window managers, among other things.
You don't happen to be Tom Clancy incognito?
:)
sorry couldn't resist
Incorrect, your biased assumption about me being biased was humorous.
If you'll take a rather precursory glance around the game industry you will see that -most- hightech hyped up games have been pushed out the door. They are marketing machines, dumbed down for the lowest common denominator. Good example of this? Pax. Pax was supposed to be one of the best star strat games made. What happened to it? The corporation. Since it takes alot of money to make these high-tech games, it takes a corporation to fund it. And where there is that, there is committees.
Typically if you look at hobbiest games. Games created by game lovers for game lovers, you'll find better game play.
Typically
It has nothing to do with open source (though that always helps) it has nothing to do with angry sentimentalism. Just common sense. So think a bit before you flame next time.
Choices. You have them. If you want to play the latest games then you'll have to keep your machine up to date. That is how it has always been. Scads of people seem to do this. I don't really see the necessity or point in such behavior. I enjoy playing games with more depth than these. Typically those types of game run on nearly every computer. (see Stars!)
There are plenty of great games being produced for the lowest common denominator. You just don't hear about them because they don't have the same marketing/media hype that these high-tech games have.
I still don't see why you are complaining so much though. My computer seems to run Quake3test just fine with all the options turned on, and it is over a year and a half old now which is quite old for gaming standards. I may or may not purchase the game, I can't justify spending 60 bucks on something I'll use for a month. The only reason I would purchase it is to support id and Carmack. I bought the old Linux version of Quake for exactly that reason. I applaud their foresight.
Don't forget the fact that when you use debian packages to install software it will automatically update the root menus of all debian compliant window-managers and enviroments. This saves lots of time reconfiguring menu rc files, expecially if you are a compulsive WM switcher like I am.
Seriously, by the time this technology gets to a point where it could be used, I don't think we'll be using moniters and keyboards. I imagine such computers could be implanted right into the human body, working with the optical nerves and what not.
Please take what I say with a -lot- of salt because I know very little about this topic. However I think that what we are looking at here is more of a biological or chemical process. In other words, they arn't sending currents of electricty as we know it down the wires. In fact the word 'wire' is just a way to understand a similarity in function.s is the case then sheilding would not be a problem?
/. reader.
Again...I have no clue I am just a
Well you can't really expect things like that to change over night. Remember that Linux is still not an optimum gaming enviroment. Expecially for all of those whiz-bang graphix fest games that most people seem to enjoy these days.
I'll always be a fan of the less commercialized games. These are the ones where you find devoted fans playing them for decades. Things like Stars! and VGAplanets. I'd rather see those games ported.
There is the problem, everybody wants something different, and there is only a limited number of people who are capabile of porting software, or creating software. You want a certain type of up to date game. Another person wants strategy games. Another wants old fashioned turn based PBEM games. You can't satisfy them all.
Loki seems to be doing an excellent job of mixing their genres around as much as possible so as to at leastget one game out there for each fetish.
But don't lose patience. Id has taken the bold move and is going to be doing exactly what you are requesting. When the rest of the industry sees their success they will be sure to follow lead.
Actually, distributions sometimes offer just what you are looking for. I know, off the top of my head, that RedHat and Debian both have "packages" that have generic images of the latest kernels. You'll have to be proficient with handling modules however because the typical strategy is to include as much as possible modular to satisfy the masses. I know that the debian kernel-image packages are very slick, they install all you need to safely boot up with the new kernel without being too risky about it and allowing you to return to your old kernel if things go bad.
All of you have written very good comments about this situation. However, there is one issue that I havn't seen anyone bring up yet that I think is probably the most important, and saddest detail of this entire deal.
There is much debate over whether the Y2K problem will be a fizzle or a bang. Truth is, there is no way to know until it happens. We can speculate endlessly, but the truth is, you don't know what the company next door is doing about it, and you don't know if what they make is vital to your success or not.
Therefore, it is in the best interest for the world to take things seriously, since the worst possible outcome is indeed -very- serious. The worst possible outcome would be a domino effect of events resulting in a severe step backwards in our technological advancements, perhaps even returning most of the commercialized world to a pre-industrial revolution state.
Now, of course, I'm not saying this will indeed happen. All I'm saying is that we should treat the situation as if that is very possible. If we do that, then we should consider this problem as a global crisis, and worthy of the same treatement that -any- global crisis should receive.
I think, the saddest thing about this whole event is that we have businesses and individuals running around worried more about their monatary acummulations than they are about the welfare of modern mankind. In my opinion this would be similiar to a scientist in a research lab discovering a cheap cure for HIV and then patenting it, restricting its use, and monopolizing on it. In my book such behavior would be criminal.
There comes along, every once in a while, certain inventions and discoveries that should -not- remain under the fists of greedy suits and corporations. In a way, some discoveries should be 'Open Source' if I may use such a poor comparison.
This is all a little melodramatic, I realize that. The sitaution is not as bad as the HIV comparison. What I am more frustrated about here is the -mindset- we have about this. Here we are, facing something as possibly damaging as any other crisis, and all we can think about doing is protecting our material wealth.
It is a sad commentary about the death of capatalism and its idealism, if they ever existed in the first place.
Looking at the track record of games these guys have produced, I'm not too worried about a 'cheap ripoff'
Kingpin looks to have some pretty sophisticated gameplay and interesting AI. I have no doubt that they will find a way to interweave an interesting plot into an old game.
I see these guys have also made Redneck Rampage. Granted this game was not a technological fest, but it was decently up to date. It had a great comedy element that was lacking in alot of games around that time. These guys seems to know how to make a game interesting, so it will be -interesting- to see how it turns out.
Well you would have to consider the size constraints/price constraints. They are probably using laptop tech. drives. As far as I know, laptop drives havn't reached those massive sizes yet. If they have, they are still expensive and you lose your price optimization.
Well that depends on your distribution. With debian Apt all you need to do is type:
apt-get install gnome
and it will automatically upgrade/install/download everything you need. that is in my opinion far easier than anything i've seen for windows.
One thing that I find particularly clumsy is having to manually tell The Gimp where the alpha border is on layers. Photoshop automatically does this and doesn't allocate the full pixel dimension of the layer to memory. With Gimp you can be lazy and just leave everything full size but then you eat up memory fast.
If it was too difficult to automatically do this, even something like allowing the user to resize the yellow border in the window instead of having to rely on guesswork in the layer's pallete would help a ton.
That is all well and good...BUT
A> The spaceshuttle is doing that at very extreme altitudes. You can't hear or feel the effects of reentry. When was the last time you heard a shuttle reentering the atmosphere?
B> They wern't even using shuttles back then. So your statistics arn't exactly correct. By the time the capsules got low enough to be creating an audible sonic boom, they had already deployed parachutes and were going downward towards the ocean at a very comfortably slow pace.
C> Even if the 'shutes wern't deployed the capsule would have long ago ceased lateral(orbital) velocity and would have simply been falling. Thus being only subject to the laws of terminal velocity, which is nowhere near the speed of sound.
As for launching rockets unawares, that is no problem. It takes a relatively simple structure to launch a rocket, there is no reason that the government couldn't have several launch pads in remote areas where they wouldn't be bothered by onlookers. Since these were the days before extensive global satellite moniters and such, it would have been very easy to sneak missions. I have no doubt that missions were sneaked. As to whether or not any moon missions were sneaked, I don't really think that would be the case. You can tell just by the way Armstrong acted when he first stepped on the moon that he was the first. If they had been running several sneaked missions to the moon there would have been *no* reason for them to withhold any information from the Apollo crew, the public maybe, but why keep your crew in the dark if you have information that is important.
A little more than half a year ago I ordered a Debian CD in the mail. It was my first attempt at installing anything linux, I had hardly even heard of it before. I installed it, never could get anything to work. So i tinkered around in the command line for a while, it was fun, took me back to my DOS roots, but I couldn't really do anything productive in it. Well a few months later I got a Redhat CD because I had heard that was easier to install and play with. And in the process came across Redhat's XBF Drivers for my video card, so this time I had X and I got my modem working, etc. Point was I tried, the first time I really didn't.
Within the space of 2 months I found myself never booting into my Windows partition. Why? Well to be quite honest I had everything I needed on the linux side And More. At first I missed EI4 because netscape is slow and buggy, but I soon learned to love lynx and now I use nothing else. Every rare once in a while I fire up mozilla m4 when looking for a new theme.
Anyways, the point of all this, I'm just an average user. Sure I'm a little more computer savvy then iMac user down the street who just waves his mouse around on the screen like a magic wand. But I'm definatly not your IS expert or CS major. What I use my computer for is for the most part average user tasks, composing short letters, writing email, snooping around on the internet, ect. You know what? Linux does these things better than windows. I like the fact that it feels like I upgraded my computer when I havn't touched a stick of memory. In fact the ironic thing is, Linux is EASIER to use than windows was. Why? Because nothing hardly ever goes wrong with it. In windows I was always having to dink around in a plethora of control panels because something had fritzled out. Now I can leave my computer up for months on end and not a problem in sight.
Using linux as a desktop computer is NOT using a flathead screwdriver to unscrew a phillips screw. That is about the piss poor worst analogy I've seen. If anything it is like using a high performance sports car to drive to work. You get lots of extra frills and boosts that you probably can't use all the time, but hey why not! You look 10 times better then everybody else on the road, and if you do need to press the petal to the metal, you don't have to worry about the carborator blowing up or the windsheild blowing off.
As well, I find your comment about not liking 'mickeysoft' but going ahead and using it anyways sick. Why support a company that you don't even believe is in the right? Do you have any conception of how hypocritical that sounds? I realize that pretty much all major corporations are bad, and micros~1 just happened to get alot of lime light maybe(I believe them to be worse than average), but you really won't see me supporting many large corporations at all unless it becomes absolutely impossible to not do so. And you know what? I don't suffer for it, in fact I probably make out better not buying name brands.
Oh by the way, love the sears vrs craftsman comment, are you insinuating that Linux is a Version of Windows?? Are you one of those shmucks that thinks Redhat 5.2 For Windows is shareware?
You know, your argument is getting old fast. You do realize that it is their job to write reviews and ancedotes on this sight? Therefore, as long as they write on subject in keeping with the things geeks want to hear, they should be able to traverse whatever territory they deem necessary. You see plenty of constructive reviews, articles, and news blurbs here. The comperably few M$-Bashing articles are done for both the enjoyment of the reader and the writer. Get your thumb out of your backdoor and loosen up a little!
The society that has harbored the entire Linux upheaval as we know it isn't your typical corporate melodrama. Anybody with a few braincells left after a long weekend can see this. So likewise, don't expect Slashdot to remain in a strict corporate setting.
"the price is steep" ??
:)
i don't really consider 200 bucks to be steep for a spline modeller of that calibre.
it's rendering engine isn't the greatest, but hey, that is what electric image is for
ya i could never use that low of a res on a big moniter. they arn't designed for it anyways, it is no wonder he has an unsharp picture with the 21" if he is using a res that low.
i use a 22" with 1600x1200 at work, going home to my poor 17" with 1024x768 is annoying!