So building a dual PIII 450 is cheaper or comparable? I don't believe it. Last I saw, a PIII 450 is $219; Here's a rough breakdown G4 + 64MB + ATI Rage 128 + 10GB 5400 ATA/33 + 32x CDROM + 2 Firewire ports + 10/100baseT + 56.6k = $1599 2xPIII 450 = $438 64MB memory = $65 ATI Rage 128 16mb = $79 10GB HD Western Digital = $135 Dual Motherboard(Microstar) = $239 40x CDROM = $35 Firewire card(Siiig) = $107 Ethernet = $45 Modem = $50 Case+PS = $85 WindowsNT = $309 That's $1507 That's not cheaper...(I won't argue power since I can't actually benchmark either setup!)
Some more input on the Sony Digital8 format; I use it in an amateur setup--it may suit the querent's needs, depending on how 'amateur' he wants to be.
The cheapest Digital8 Sony camera runs about $700, w/o LCD, and about $760 with. It's the standard Sony camera, with autofeatures and nightshoot, auto-stabilization, etc. It's one of the more expensive cameras, with analogue cameras reaching into the $300 range-but it's still cheaper than the other digital cameras I saw, still for about $1,100.
I can use it's s-video and RCA inputs to read data from many non-digital sources, and also to output back from digital masters.
The tapes are much cheaper and easier to find, though I can't compare qualities.
I'd advocate Mac as well, but am using a PC system quite successfully. It's an NT setup, with a Pinnacle Micro DV200 firewire board-it's selling point is that it guarantees 100% frame capture, by taking multiple passes if necessary. Most of the time it only takes one pass, but it's really nice in preventing the odd frame skip.
Setup: Firewire Card ~$300 Sony Camera ~$750 PC w/scsi ~$1200 WinNT ~$100(educational discount!) Adobe Premiere ~$400 Adobe Aftereffects ~$300
Total ~$3500
There may be better solutions/choices/combinations, but I use this one satisfactorily.
Then why not buy a Palm? Of course you'd be paying premium for it, because currently there are no real competitors. A used one could prolly be had for less than $200, and one of those Palm IIIe are $229 new, right? I really hope more Palm work-alikes come out, and at lower price points.
By that premise *all* scientific thought is theory and hypothesis. How can we prove the gravitational constant or relativistic physics? All we can do is show that it occurs/works within a certain error, no more, no less.
At some point we will find an incontravertible error, and revise our science until they are more accurate--but even then, it is a theory and not a law.
There are plenty of hybrids around. Lots of dogs are, surprise, hybrids. If you mean inter-species breeding? Genetically too dissimilar. Do you mean 'missing link' hybrids? Previous versions will be replaced by newer versions because newer versions are more efficient/intelligent/effective. I don't know that I can 'prove' it, but I will say that 2 different species that occupy the same niche will either wipe the other out or evolve to occupy different niches. I don't think there is another option. So in this case either we *were* half ape men who evolved into full humans, or we co-existed with them until we finally wiped them out, or they evolved into something sufficiently different to survive in a different niche(great apes?) while we evolved into something else entirely so that competition between the two did not occur.
Going to pluto has many cool points associatited besides actually getting to pluto.
In the process we will need to discover more about how the human body can tolerate 0g for extended periods of time, including muscle and bone research, which has great impact on earthbound condtions and diseases such as multiple schlerosis, osteoperosis, and other degenerative diseases.
We will have to discover more efficient and advanced power sources, energy and material recycling processes, and better insulations, materials, and armors.
Some examples from that page: "Dustbuster, shock-absorbing helmets, home security systems, smoke detectors, flat panel televisions, high-density batteries, trash compactors, food packaging and freeze-dried technology, cool sportswear, sports bras, hair styling appliances, fogless ski goggles, self-adjusting sunglasses, composite golf clubs, hang gliders, art preservation, and quartz crystal timing equipment."
Where else would we have all this research and development, if not NASA?
Sure private companies might be big enough, now, to do so... but private companies also change, adjust, and re-organize... and NASA is here as long as we believe in it and support it.
NASA, and science research in general, on the surface may seem like a money sink with no results; like particle accelerators, but on the other hand we get superconductors, hardened electronics, insulated electronics, etc. A lot of this stuff is really hot, interesting, and a product of the space program!
Keep up the 3dfx bashing guys. 3dfx is the only company that is either shipping or helping other people ship drivers for their hardware *right now* for DOS/Win/Mac/Linux/BeOS, etc. Hopefully, nVidia's foray into source code releases will push 3dfx to do the same.
Yup, keep up the bashing, and maybe 3dfx will be forced to compete =)
NVIDIA released X sources last week for their TNT and TNT2 accelerators for Linux, as well as OS/2 Warp, Win3.1, Win9x, WinNT, BeOS, and Linux drivers.
And NVIDIA has a better OpenGL driver.
And NVIDIA has more features on their cards than 3dfx...
The only reason to buy a 3dfx card is loyalty or price... and a TNT from Creative is only $80 or so anyway =)
UPDATE: Thus far, ten readers have written in with reports -- so far, only one has been able to duplicate this problem using C'Ts script...and at Black Light, with our testbed OS X Server machine, the script did not cause any errors. Discussing the problem with Apple turned up the fact that depending on configuration, some (possibly many) OS X Server installs appear to be proof against the problem. One suggestion from Cupertino is to disable as many other service daemons as possible on your server to maximize your chances -- and, of course, this also improves memory usage and overall performance.
End quote. Thus far it isn't a 100% reproducible bug. That being the case, anyone know how Apple knows what/how to fix it? Regardless, lets see how fast Apple can fix this...
I guess one of the biggest issues concerning the Internet is the ease of copying digital media, and the concomittant problems of ownership, compensation, and distribution rights.
Take for example mp3s and their relatively easy access. What is intellectual property worth when production costs and such dilute the value? In terms of costs of bandwidth, file size, song quality, and the unquantifiable/unqualifiable pleasure or utility, how do you determine value? Economically, digital media is worthless because of oversupply; not that it isn't worth owning, but because there is so much(infinite, really) available that prices drop to download times and internet access issues.
How should/will the music industry respond to that? How should money, profit, distribution, etc be handled? Is it good or bad?
Same issues with movies, like the rogue Phantom Menace CDs floating around. Or video games. Or applications. Is anything truly worth $400 when it only costs some time, a couple of burned CDs, and ISP connection charges? Is Microsoft actually cheating us by charging us $400 for their Office Suite when it costs mere dollars to download? Or are we cheating Microsoft for not paying the price *they* choose to set?
How does market economics and dynamic change, when the Internet can literally make interaction personal and 1:1 as well as nameless, faceless, and substanceless?
That was never my point, that corporations will solve world/global problems. If they do, it will always be incidental and accidental, with profit and growth being their primary motivation.
The original poster was mentioning that corporations won't solve world hunger; my counterpoint not is that they will, but they *can*, if they can be convinced they will make a profit, and if they think they can dominate the market.
The free market will only solve what problems people think to pose to the free market; before FedEX and UPS, shipping and mail was thought to be to akward and inconvenient for business to handle, so a government run monopoly was formed. Guess what? We now have businesses that specialize in shipping and postage. Likewise, we take a very stupid and silly way to solve global hunger; send lots of food, even if it all rots in the sun, undelivered, unconsumed.
The strength of a free market is, ostensibly, efficiency; if you are inefficient, a competitor who can, will take advantage of that inefficiency to make more money.
In this case, if some genius can pose the problem of world hunger in terms of market, control, and profit, then same genius can solve that problem with market economics.
The problem is how to pose social problems as something one can 'profit' from.
One can only create scarcity if one has a monopoly, I think =)
If there are 3 companies producing *anything*, unless they collude, the ones who withhold service get screwed over by those that don't. Competition works, in this manner.
The problem with world hunger is not food production, it's allocation and distribution. I can't support my claims because I don't have the research results in front of me, but during the worst famine years of Ethiopia, a much talked about starving country, they had more food per capita than many non-starving(a lot of donations and some pretty good agricultural yields, I think.)
What kept the people hungry? Lack of highways and transports to get the food to cities and people. Political turmoil and strife that kept food rotting in warehouses, on docks and wharves, stuck in vans that won't be driven.
I'm not sure what you mean by Monsanto creating genetic locking mechanisms... To do what? So that farmers can't grow anything else? I'm confused by your statement.
Sorry, this post appears twice... forgot to log in =)
I'm a bad test, as I can *always* see my own comments, no matter the threshold...
Though I do know reparenting works great, anyone want to change their threshold levels and respond?
Specifically, when I saw the page as an AC, slashdot didn't seem to know how to order/rank the messages, and I got a list of 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2... everything else was below threshold =)
I guess it's unimportant, really.
It seems as if, for the AC, that the original post doesn't stay visible, no matter how high the comment attached to it... Though the comments do become visible...
For me, when I'm logged on, my original posts are visible, but I suspect that's because my posts will *always* be visible to me...
So there is a reparent checkbox under preferences; with it enabled, I get to see two of every highly rated comment, as well as the reparented original post, despite it being below threshold.
With the checkbox disabled, the repeats disappeared, but the original comment/post remains visible...
I guess reparenting causes comments to 'belong' to the main thread if it is higher than the threshold, and if it's parent is below threshold.
What effect is causing lower than threshold posts to stay visible, when it owns a higher than threshold comment? Is this an intentional feature then?
I guess I got the term re-parenting mixed up.
High comments with low parents get 'reparented'
Low parents with high comments get bumped up to *always* be minimally the same level of visibility as the comments, I guess.
So I made a comment with the intention of getting it moved down, and a reply with the intention of it getting moved up, to see reparenting in action...
Hopefully this comment doesn't get moved down as well =)
Anyway, the reparenting works, but the reply appears twice now, as the child of the reparented comment, and as it's own free floating comment, though still below the reparented comment.
Is this intentional? A bug? Anyone else see it?
Set threshold to 2, and you should see it =)
-AS
Re:Test comment, any moderators?
on
Slashdot Tweaks
·
· Score: 2
Again, thanks to the moderators who made this happen.
*sob*
I love you!
Sorry for the sillyness, playing to see if there is a bug in the system =)
So a moderator is floating around, and nudging this comment around already...
Thanks, whoever you are!
-AS
Test comment, any moderators?
on
Slashdot Tweaks
·
· Score: 4
So this is a default +2 comment, if a moderator is willing to demonstrate this reparenting... make it a +3 comment, while making the parent 0 or -1, I guess?
But again, I'm biased, having grown up where the computer was more of an entertainment center than the TV. All the TV was good for was evening news, afternoon cartoons, and hooking up the SNES/PSX to.
Watching DVDs on my 17" monitor is a little cramped, but quality is so much better than any of our TVs. I'd think that with a generation growing up on computers, it may actually be second nature to watch DVDs on a computer, especially as monitor prices are dropping.
I dunno how the market will shape, but TV viewership *seems* to be going down as more content and capability is added to computers, such as news, streaming audio and video, games, chat, etc. Either that, or TVs and computers will merge...
OpenGL has an ancillary and auxillary set of libraries and APIs to deal with windows, menus, overlays, mouse, keyboard, controllers, etc.
It's the GLUT libraries, GL Utility Toolkit. I guess do a search for Mark Kilgard, or GLUT, or go to OpenGL.org.
They also have resources for game design, I think.
GL itself will only get you 2d and 3d output, you need other stuff for networking, sound, and UI. GLUT does the UI nicely, if not optimally. It's an introduction, at least, and it's very simple to use =) We had to crash course it and learn it and write a game in a week for our first Graphics homework assignment.
What if increased computation allows us to predict hurricane path and windspeeds? Or tornado paths down to the meter? It would enable people to prepare properly, and with more foresight than saying, 'Geez, there's a tornado coming straight for my house!'.
Or if airports and airborn flights could have a decent warning, enough to switch destination airports ahead of time and schedule alternate passage for their passengers, with advanced storm watch technology?
Or what if we could actually predict an earthquake an hour ahead of it's arrival, by crunching the ground based seismic data being feed continuously from instruments all over a region?
We certainly do have enough data; it's nothing more than planting more seismographs, tapping into satellite feeds, placing more barometric sensor packages, observing ocean currents and temperatures, observing the reflectivity of cloud cover, all these millions of little details that *have* to be ignored, until now, because the computers weren't fast enough to deal with them in a reasonable amount of time.
There is so much more that I am not creative enough to list here, but it does exist.
As for politicians... that's out of my league, and I feel Jon shouldn't have used that as a topic in his essay.
Slashdot Mirror
So building a dual PIII 450 is cheaper or comparable? I don't believe it. Last I saw, a PIII 450 is $219; Here's a rough breakdown G4 + 64MB + ATI Rage 128 + 10GB 5400 ATA/33 + 32x CDROM + 2 Firewire ports + 10/100baseT + 56.6k = $1599 2xPIII 450 = $438 64MB memory = $65 ATI Rage 128 16mb = $79 10GB HD Western Digital = $135 Dual Motherboard(Microstar) = $239 40x CDROM = $35 Firewire card(Siiig) = $107 Ethernet = $45 Modem = $50 Case+PS = $85 WindowsNT = $309 That's $1507 That's not cheaper...(I won't argue power since I can't actually benchmark either setup!)
-AS
Read your faq, and agreed with most of it.
Some more input on the Sony Digital8 format; I use it in an amateur setup--it may suit the querent's needs, depending on how 'amateur' he wants to be.
The cheapest Digital8 Sony camera runs about $700, w/o LCD, and about $760 with. It's the standard Sony camera, with autofeatures and nightshoot, auto-stabilization, etc. It's one of the more expensive cameras, with analogue cameras reaching into the $300 range-but it's still cheaper than the other digital cameras I saw, still for about $1,100.
I can use it's s-video and RCA inputs to read data from many non-digital sources, and also to output back from digital masters.
The tapes are much cheaper and easier to find, though I can't compare qualities.
I'd advocate Mac as well, but am using a PC system quite successfully. It's an NT setup, with a Pinnacle Micro DV200 firewire board-it's selling point is that it guarantees 100% frame capture, by taking multiple passes if necessary. Most of the time it only takes one pass, but it's really nice in preventing the odd frame skip.
Setup:
Firewire Card ~$300
Sony Camera ~$750
PC w/scsi ~$1200
WinNT ~$100(educational discount!)
Adobe Premiere ~$400
Adobe Aftereffects ~$300
Total ~$3500
There may be better solutions/choices/combinations, but I use this one satisfactorily.
-AS
Then why not buy a Palm? Of course you'd be paying premium for it, because currently there are no real competitors. A used one could prolly be had for less than $200, and one of those Palm IIIe are $229 new, right? I really hope more Palm work-alikes come out, and at lower price points.
-AS
By that premise *all* scientific thought is theory and hypothesis. How can we prove the gravitational constant or relativistic physics? All we can do is show that it occurs/works within a certain error, no more, no less.
At some point we will find an incontravertible error, and revise our science until they are more accurate--but even then, it is a theory and not a law.
-AS
There are plenty of hybrids around. Lots of dogs are, surprise, hybrids. If you mean inter-species breeding? Genetically too dissimilar. Do you mean 'missing link' hybrids? Previous versions will be replaced by newer versions because newer versions are more efficient/intelligent/effective. I don't know that I can 'prove' it, but I will say that 2 different species that occupy the same niche will either wipe the other out or evolve to occupy different niches. I don't think there is another option. So in this case either we *were* half ape men who evolved into full humans, or we co-existed with them until we finally wiped them out, or they evolved into something sufficiently different to survive in a different niche(great apes?) while we evolved into something else entirely so that competition between the two did not occur.
-AS
Yes, we really need this stuff.
Going to pluto has many cool points associatited besides actually getting to pluto.
In the process we will need to discover more about how the human body can tolerate 0g for extended periods of time, including muscle and bone research, which has great impact on earthbound condtions and diseases such as multiple schlerosis, osteoperosis, and other degenerative diseases.
We will have to discover more efficient and advanced power sources, energy and material recycling processes, and better insulations, materials, and armors.
A small sample of some stuff we have because of NASA
Some examples from that page: "Dustbuster, shock-absorbing helmets, home security systems, smoke detectors, flat panel televisions, high-density batteries, trash compactors, food packaging and freeze-dried technology, cool sportswear, sports bras, hair styling appliances, fogless ski goggles, self-adjusting sunglasses, composite golf clubs, hang gliders, art preservation, and quartz crystal timing equipment."
Where else would we have all this research and development, if not NASA?
Sure private companies might be big enough, now, to do so... but private companies also change, adjust, and re-organize... and NASA is here as long as we believe in it and support it.
NASA, and science research in general, on the surface may seem like a money sink with no results; like particle accelerators, but on the other hand we get superconductors, hardened electronics, insulated electronics, etc. A lot of this stuff is really hot, interesting, and a product of the space program!
-AS
Keep up the 3dfx bashing guys. 3dfx is the only company that is either shipping or helping other people ship drivers for their hardware *right now* for DOS/Win/Mac/Linux/BeOS, etc. Hopefully, nVidia's foray into source code releases will push 3dfx to do the same.
Yup, keep up the bashing, and maybe 3dfx will be forced to compete =)
NVIDIA released X sources last week for their TNT and TNT2 accelerators for Linux, as well as OS/2 Warp, Win3.1, Win9x, WinNT, BeOS, and Linux drivers.
And NVIDIA has a better OpenGL driver.
And NVIDIA has more features on their cards than 3dfx...
The only reason to buy a 3dfx card is loyalty or price... and a TNT from Creative is only $80 or so anyway =)
-AS
Sony has a monopoly on the market, whatever that market is, so they can charge as they will...
The minute someone else has another robotic pet on the market, the price will drop, the manufacturing rate will increase, etc.
Personally, I want a robotic Pikachu!
But I'm weird.
-AS
Heres an update from MacOSRumors:
UPDATE: Thus far, ten readers have written in with reports -- so far, only one has been able to duplicate this problem using C'Ts script...and at Black Light, with our testbed OS X Server machine, the script did not cause any errors. Discussing the problem with Apple turned up the fact that depending on configuration, some (possibly many) OS X Server installs appear to be proof against the problem. One suggestion from Cupertino is to disable as many other service daemons as possible on your server to maximize your chances -- and, of course, this also improves memory usage and overall performance.
End quote. Thus far it isn't a 100% reproducible bug. That being the case, anyone know how Apple knows what/how to fix it? Regardless, lets see how fast Apple can fix this...
-AS
I guess one of the biggest issues concerning the Internet is the ease of copying digital media, and the concomittant problems of ownership, compensation, and distribution rights.
Take for example mp3s and their relatively easy access. What is intellectual property worth when production costs and such dilute the value? In terms of costs of bandwidth, file size, song quality, and the unquantifiable/unqualifiable pleasure or utility, how do you determine value? Economically, digital media is worthless because of oversupply; not that it isn't worth owning, but because there is so much(infinite, really) available that prices drop to download times and internet access issues.
How should/will the music industry respond to that? How should money, profit, distribution, etc be handled? Is it good or bad?
Same issues with movies, like the rogue Phantom Menace CDs floating around. Or video games. Or applications. Is anything truly worth $400 when it only costs some time, a couple of burned CDs, and ISP connection charges? Is Microsoft actually cheating us by charging us $400 for their Office Suite when it costs mere dollars to download? Or are we cheating Microsoft for not paying the price *they* choose to set?
How does market economics and dynamic change, when the Internet can literally make interaction personal and 1:1 as well as nameless, faceless, and substanceless?
Have fun. This is my $0.02
-AS
That was never my point, that corporations will solve world/global problems. If they do, it will always be incidental and accidental, with profit and growth being their primary motivation.
The original poster was mentioning that corporations won't solve world hunger; my counterpoint not is that they will, but they *can*, if they can be convinced they will make a profit, and if they think they can dominate the market.
The free market will only solve what problems people think to pose to the free market; before FedEX and UPS, shipping and mail was thought to be to akward and inconvenient for business to handle, so a government run monopoly was formed. Guess what? We now have businesses that specialize in shipping and postage. Likewise, we take a very stupid and silly way to solve global hunger; send lots of food, even if it all rots in the sun, undelivered, unconsumed.
The strength of a free market is, ostensibly, efficiency; if you are inefficient, a competitor who can, will take advantage of that inefficiency to make more money.
In this case, if some genius can pose the problem of world hunger in terms of market, control, and profit, then same genius can solve that problem with market economics.
The problem is how to pose social problems as something one can 'profit' from.
-AS
One can only create scarcity if one has a monopoly, I think =)
If there are 3 companies producing *anything*, unless they collude, the ones who withhold service get screwed over by those that don't. Competition works, in this manner.
The problem with world hunger is not food production, it's allocation and distribution. I can't support my claims because I don't have the research results in front of me, but during the worst famine years of Ethiopia, a much talked about starving country, they had more food per capita than many non-starving(a lot of donations and some pretty good agricultural yields, I think.)
What kept the people hungry? Lack of highways and transports to get the food to cities and people. Political turmoil and strife that kept food rotting in warehouses, on docks and wharves, stuck in vans that won't be driven.
I'm not sure what you mean by Monsanto creating genetic locking mechanisms... To do what? So that farmers can't grow anything else? I'm confused by your statement.
-AS
If you turn off, under your preferences, re-parenting, then you won't get those dangly floating replies...
You still get the 'feature' that crappy posts are as visible as their highest reply.
-AS
Sorry, this post appears twice... forgot to log in =)
I'm a bad test, as I can *always* see my own comments, no matter the threshold...
Though I do know reparenting works great, anyone want to change their threshold levels and respond?
Specifically, when I saw the page as an AC, slashdot didn't seem to know how to order/rank the messages, and I got a list of 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2... everything else was below threshold =)
I guess it's unimportant, really.
It seems as if, for the AC, that the original post doesn't stay visible, no matter how high the comment attached to it... Though the comments do become visible...
For me, when I'm logged on, my original posts are visible, but I suspect that's because my posts will *always* be visible to me...
-AS
So there is a reparent checkbox under preferences; with it enabled, I get to see two of every highly rated comment, as well as the reparented original post, despite it being below threshold.
With the checkbox disabled, the repeats disappeared, but the original comment/post remains visible...
I guess reparenting causes comments to 'belong' to the main thread if it is higher than the threshold, and if it's parent is below threshold.
What effect is causing lower than threshold posts to stay visible, when it owns a higher than threshold comment? Is this an intentional feature then?
I guess I got the term re-parenting mixed up.
High comments with low parents get 'reparented'
Low parents with high comments get bumped up to *always* be minimally the same level of visibility as the comments, I guess.
-AS
So I made a comment with the intention of getting it moved down, and a reply with the intention of it getting moved up, to see reparenting in action...
Hopefully this comment doesn't get moved down as well =)
Anyway, the reparenting works, but the reply appears twice now, as the child of the reparented comment, and as it's own free floating comment, though still below the reparented comment.
Is this intentional? A bug? Anyone else see it?
Set threshold to 2, and you should see it =)
-AS
Again, thanks to the moderators who made this happen.
*sob*
I love you!
Sorry for the sillyness, playing to see if there is a bug in the system =)
-AS
It is a bug...
*All* +2 comments appear when threshold is set to +2... Reparenting just makes it appear twice, I guess.
Unless Slashdot wants this to happen?
-AS
So it does work...
I set my threshold to hide comments below 2...
And the original post, along with it's +3 comment, appears.
However, the +3 comment appears *twice*, once under the reparented comment, and later below, as a free floating +3 comment...
I wonder what happens if someone(I guess me) replies to both? I guess they still count as one comment, even if it shows up twice...
-AS
Talking to myself here =)
So a moderator is floating around, and nudging this comment around already...
Thanks, whoever you are!
-AS
So this is a default +2 comment, if a moderator is willing to demonstrate this reparenting... make it a +3 comment, while making the parent 0 or -1, I guess?
I guess it's a waste of points though. =)
-AS
But again, I'm biased, having grown up where the computer was more of an entertainment center than the TV. All the TV was good for was evening news, afternoon cartoons, and hooking up the SNES/PSX to.
Watching DVDs on my 17" monitor is a little cramped, but quality is so much better than any of our TVs. I'd think that with a generation growing up on computers, it may actually be second nature to watch DVDs on a computer, especially as monitor prices are dropping.
I dunno how the market will shape, but TV viewership *seems* to be going down as more content and capability is added to computers, such as news, streaming audio and video, games, chat, etc. Either that, or TVs and computers will merge...
-AS
Input?
GLUT handles mouse, keyboard, trackball, stereoscopic glasses, menus, gloves, etc.
GL Utility Toolkit, not GL itself.
GL itself does fine for 2d, since 2d is really a subset of 3d.
GL itself is a low level API; iso-3d mode has to be done yourself, just as true 3d mode, or fisheye 3d modes...
IIRC, however, there are camera and perspective models that allow iso-3d transforms and manipulation, as well as true 3d perspective and transforms...
-AS
I'm not sure how 'optimized' you want it...
OpenGL has an ancillary and auxillary set of libraries and APIs to deal with windows, menus, overlays, mouse, keyboard, controllers, etc.
It's the GLUT libraries, GL Utility Toolkit. I guess do a search for Mark Kilgard, or GLUT, or go to OpenGL.org.
They also have resources for game design, I think.
GL itself will only get you 2d and 3d output, you need other stuff for networking, sound, and UI. GLUT does the UI nicely, if not optimally. It's an introduction, at least, and it's very simple to use =) We had to crash course it and learn it and write a game in a week for our first Graphics homework assignment.
-AS
What do we care?
What if increased computation allows us to predict hurricane path and windspeeds? Or tornado paths down to the meter? It would enable people to prepare properly, and with more foresight than saying, 'Geez, there's a tornado coming straight for my house!'.
Or if airports and airborn flights could have a decent warning, enough to switch destination airports ahead of time and schedule alternate passage for their passengers, with advanced storm watch technology?
Or what if we could actually predict an earthquake an hour ahead of it's arrival, by crunching the ground based seismic data being feed continuously from instruments all over a region?
We certainly do have enough data; it's nothing more than planting more seismographs, tapping into satellite feeds, placing more barometric sensor packages, observing ocean currents and temperatures, observing the reflectivity of cloud cover, all these millions of little details that *have* to be ignored, until now, because the computers weren't fast enough to deal with them in a reasonable amount of time.
There is so much more that I am not creative enough to list here, but it does exist.
As for politicians... that's out of my league, and I feel Jon shouldn't have used that as a topic in his essay.
-AS