Then the establishment will probably have to change. Being religious was illegal in the USSR at one point, too.
...you could be deformed, mentally incapacitated, or worse
Yup, all of which could happen without to a non-cloned person as well.
What if you are just one of a string of a successful clones, all from the same genetic source?
Well, then I guess he'd be a clone. So?
One of the givens of being human, that we are all unique, will not apply to you...
(I'm going to modify your sentence to be "genetically unique", since otherwise your sentence would be quite biased). At one point, being vulnerable to smallpox was a given of being human. That's changed. This can as well.
Not to mention that, depending on the country, you may be alive simply as a tissue harvesting candidate for the original genetic donor
Yeah, as opposed to a genetic vessel for your parents to carry on their genes?
Cloning may be a bit different, but it's hardly some hideous, awful thing. I don't see why everyone gets so worked up about it.
The difference is that Altavista and Yahoo have some decent services (now outpaced by the ever-technologically advancing Google, yes, but for their time useful). Overture's only purpose to me so far has been to search for various things and be entertained at how much money people are blowing on getting hits. It isn't an even remotely useful search engine.
The Patent Office isn't charged with ensuring that the patents are valid. Anyone who wants to contest them gets to do that. If you want the PO to ensure validity, you're going to need to give them a lot more funding than they get, since you need top-of-the-field experts in almost every domain to be hanging around.
A) Antialiasing, as you mentioned B) Longevity. Keep that card usable when the frame rates drop C) Motion blur. Maybe the eye can only see 50 fps of *real world* imagery, but that's motion blurred. I'd say you'd need maybe a 600 fps card at least and some fast blending to get a convincing motion blur without new tricks. That'd be 10 frames per frame, which is probably more of a minimum than a maximum. D) Higher resolutions -- if you can run at 640x480 at 300 fps, you can probably run at 1600x1200. E) Bragging rights.
X10 is great. Any product that makes MSIE users subsidize me (by looking at popunder ads) is fine by me, cruel as it may sound. I use dillo and don't worry about ads.
I don't have a lot of interest in the driver source code (ATM...I did have Ethernet problems at one point where having the driver source helped me find out what was going on).
However, the fact that the source isn't open does impact users:
1) Does Nvidia support PowerPC-based Linux? Yeah, didn't think so. Can anyone do a port without the source? Nope.
2) Maybe you can't grok driver code, but there are people out there who can and *can* fix at least minor bugs. Carmack wrote much of the Utah-GLX Matrox drivers -- I'm willing to bet that if he's developing RTCW and runs across a driver bug, he might just send in a patch or at least be able to report *exactly* what the problem is to Nvidia.
3) One of the coolest things about Linux is that you don't run into hardware that "isn't supported anymore". A lot of Windows people can't use or can't fully use hardware they purchased for 9X/ME under NT/2k/XP when they decided to transition over. The company making the hardware requiring the driver is never going to fix their drivers, since they aren't making the product any more. No one out there is going to fix them because the source isn't available. On Linux, someone can just poke the driver into shape and keep it running for years. Example: at work, we have a sound card that works in 9X, doesn't (and never will) work in 2k, but works fine in Linux and probably will forever. Open Source is forever.
Point is, not having the source out there has nasty trickledown effects, even if it doesn't directly impact you. Besides, I like to support companies that help Open Source.
In order of decreasing Linux goodness: Matrox (give out full specs, fund much driver development, only use tiny amount of binary driver microcode) ATI (give out many specs, support open source authors) Nvidia (binary only drivers)
Of course, Matrox doesn't sell gaming class cards, so if you're wanting to play RTCW, then your decision is really already made. However, if you're going for lighter weight 3d, Matrox is a good choice.
Some people like white noise in the background. Those of us that didn't grow up in urban areas or with a fan running all night often don't. The white noise isn't constantly annoying to me anymore, but I'd much prefer a quiet machine if I can manage to get one.
One of the major reasons I'm putting off buying a new machine is that heat dissipation on all the newer CPUs/motherboards is ridiculous. I don't want a louder system.
Forcing MS to produce a stripped down version of the OS might not help anyone *in the short run*. Forcing modularity most definitely will help everyone but MS (and maybe even MS in the long run, if their dev costs go down).
Okaaay...wasn't that what MS was enthusiastically billing 2k as? A clean rewrite?
Also, this "4000 configurations" thing is bullshit, unless you buy the MS propoganda that everyone should run their OS, their office apps, and nothing else. They're just counting all combinations of components...there are far, far more combinations of applications than that, and some applications *do* have compatibility issues with each other. I don't see there being a huge issue.
I have to agree. The "it would be difficult" argument doesn't hold any water. MS knew what they were doing when they were doing it, and knew that they might get into this position, and are gambling on the fact that the difficulty they've created is enough to buy them the right to demodularize everything.
They went into this with both eyes open, and they're going to have to pay for it.
Modularity in Windows would fix about ten million issues. It would be the best thing that happened to consumers (Windows ones, that is). Does the start bar suck? Use one that someone else has written. Same for explorer, the command line shell, any anything else you like.
Modularity always helps consumers, barring other factors. Integration and bundling helps one entity -- Microsoft.
I don't disagree that MS could make a modular version of Windows that would suck, but if done properly, they'd actually have something that UNIX would have a tough time competing with for most users because it'd be so good.
One thing that would be really cool is a goverment review board that would prevent any for-a-fee new versions of Windows from shipping until it passes review. No pass, no ship. Oh, MS would blow zillions on PR, but they'd be free to release service patches, so it'd hardly hurt anyone much. Plus, if the thing got rejected a few times, engineers would have time to actually test and debug those early copies of Windows that everyone always wants to avoid.
I know... Is a Windows box not a Windows box unless it can get 150 fps on Jedi Knight II at 1600x1200?
And Mozilla is an awful browser. Galeon is a step in the right direction. I like my browsers to be just browser, not mail clients/newsreaders/gopher clients, though...and dillo fits nicely.
I've complained to Dell and Compaq about unnecessary use of Javascript and both were fixed -- Dell actually took things really seriously and even had a user experience person email me with questions. I was deeply impressed.
OTOH, Logitech's web team sucks. I love Logitech mice (the alternative is MS), and since they churn out new models at some ungodly rate, I like to check their website periodically for tech info and a photo of each model. The problem is that the whole stupid site uses Javascript. I emailed their web team twice, and the only thing they did was added text saying "This site may not work properly without Javascript enabled".
If my next mouse isn't a Logitech one, it will be entirely because of the web team and how annoying it is to get simple information on their product line rather than because of product quality -- I've always been quite pleased with Logitech.
Given that accessability is the higest value for most sites (I mean, come on, no one is going to go back daily to Sharp's website because the design look kicks butt), why are so many high-priced developers completely incapable of making webpages that work for everyone?
Okay, I'll bite. What "cool technologies" does MS provide?
".NET allows developers to build very powerful solutions around web services much more quickly". So what about perl and java? What are they?
7x performance? Bullshit. Yes, Java isn't fast, but the limiting factor with modern, good VMs (like IBM's) is *not* the CPU but the fact that it eats RAM like there's no tomorrow. Java generally runs more than 1/7 the speed of a compiled C program. You are not going to convince me that MS's newcomer C# compilers run 7 times faster than Java, which would be faster than C benchmarks.
FreeBSD's multiproc performance is not supposed to be that great -- it's about where Linux 2.2 was when they were in the middle of the big shift towards multiproc.
Slashdot Mirror
What if you are illegal
...you could be deformed, mentally incapacitated, or worse
Then the establishment will probably have to change. Being religious was illegal in the USSR at one point, too.
Yup, all of which could happen without to a non-cloned person as well.
What if you are just one of a string of a successful clones, all from the same genetic source?
Well, then I guess he'd be a clone. So?
One of the givens of being human, that we are all unique, will not apply to you...
(I'm going to modify your sentence to be "genetically unique", since otherwise your sentence would be quite biased). At one point, being vulnerable to smallpox was a given of being human. That's changed. This can as well.
Not to mention that, depending on the country, you may be alive simply as a tissue harvesting candidate for the original genetic donor
Yeah, as opposed to a genetic vessel for your parents to carry on their genes?
Cloning may be a bit different, but it's hardly some hideous, awful thing. I don't see why everyone gets so worked up about it.
I really hate how News for Nerds seems to be more like news for the tree hugging anti nuke no space traval[sic] hippies
No, that would be kuro5hin.
Too bad it costs money to register patents, or I suspect that someone would have registered this already.
Doesn't Northern Light do this?
Probably because Google is profitable and someone that can be sued.
The difference is that Altavista and Yahoo have some decent services (now outpaced by the ever-technologically advancing Google, yes, but for their time useful). Overture's only purpose to me so far has been to search for various things and be entertained at how much money people are blowing on getting hits. It isn't an even remotely useful search engine.
The Patent Office isn't charged with ensuring that the patents are valid. Anyone who wants to contest them gets to do that. If you want the PO to ensure validity, you're going to need to give them a lot more funding than they get, since you need top-of-the-field experts in almost every domain to be hanging around.
Patent the idea of squeezing stupid tech patents past the US Patent Office.
Actually, I have to say that this *is* kind of good.
The more egregious the stupid tech claims are, the better chance there is of legislation going through to restrict them from happening any more.
Just another moneygrab attempt from a washed up dot com. Nothing more to see here, folks.
A) Antialiasing, as you mentioned
B) Longevity. Keep that card usable when the frame rates drop
C) Motion blur. Maybe the eye can only see 50 fps of *real world* imagery, but that's motion blurred. I'd say you'd need maybe a 600 fps card at least and some fast blending to get a convincing motion blur without new tricks. That'd be 10 frames per frame, which is probably more of a minimum than a maximum.
D) Higher resolutions -- if you can run at 640x480 at 300 fps, you can probably run at 1600x1200.
E) Bragging rights.
X10 is great. Any product that makes MSIE users subsidize me (by looking at popunder ads) is fine by me, cruel as it may sound. I use dillo and don't worry about ads.
:-)
I don't have a lot of interest in the driver source code (ATM...I did have Ethernet problems at one point where having the driver source helped me find out what was going on).
However, the fact that the source isn't open does impact users:
1) Does Nvidia support PowerPC-based Linux? Yeah, didn't think so. Can anyone do a port without the source? Nope.
2) Maybe you can't grok driver code, but there are people out there who can and *can* fix at least minor bugs. Carmack wrote much of the Utah-GLX Matrox drivers -- I'm willing to bet that if he's developing RTCW and runs across a driver bug, he might just send in a patch or at least be able to report *exactly* what the problem is to Nvidia.
3) One of the coolest things about Linux is that you don't run into hardware that "isn't supported anymore". A lot of Windows people can't use or can't fully use hardware they purchased for 9X/ME under NT/2k/XP when they decided to transition over. The company making the hardware requiring the driver is never going to fix their drivers, since they aren't making the product any more. No one out there is going to fix them because the source isn't available. On Linux, someone can just poke the driver into shape and keep it running for years. Example: at work, we have a sound card that works in 9X, doesn't (and never will) work in 2k, but works fine in Linux and probably will forever. Open Source is forever.
Point is, not having the source out there has nasty trickledown effects, even if it doesn't directly impact you. Besides, I like to support companies that help Open Source.
In order of decreasing Linux goodness:
Matrox (give out full specs, fund much driver development, only use tiny amount of binary driver microcode)
ATI (give out many specs, support open source authors)
Nvidia (binary only drivers)
Of course, Matrox doesn't sell gaming class cards, so if you're wanting to play RTCW, then your decision is really already made. However, if you're going for lighter weight 3d, Matrox is a good choice.
Besides the waveform analysis, you have to have pretty good sound reproduction to swing this. Which means your own set of good speakers. :-)
Me.
Some people like white noise in the background. Those of us that didn't grow up in urban areas or with a fan running all night often don't. The white noise isn't constantly annoying to me anymore, but I'd much prefer a quiet machine if I can manage to get one.
One of the major reasons I'm putting off buying a new machine is that heat dissipation on all the newer CPUs/motherboards is ridiculous. I don't want a louder system.
Forcing MS to produce a stripped down version of the OS might not help anyone *in the short run*. Forcing modularity most definitely will help everyone but MS (and maybe even MS in the long run, if their dev costs go down).
A complete redesign?
Okaaay...wasn't that what MS was enthusiastically billing 2k as? A clean rewrite?
Also, this "4000 configurations" thing is bullshit, unless you buy the MS propoganda that everyone should run their OS, their office apps, and nothing else. They're just counting all combinations of components...there are far, far more combinations of applications than that, and some applications *do* have compatibility issues with each other. I don't see there being a huge issue.
I have to agree. The "it would be difficult" argument doesn't hold any water. MS knew what they were doing when they were doing it, and knew that they might get into this position, and are gambling on the fact that the difficulty they've created is enough to buy them the right to demodularize everything.
They went into this with both eyes open, and they're going to have to pay for it.
Modularity in Windows would fix about ten million issues. It would be the best thing that happened to consumers (Windows ones, that is). Does the start bar suck? Use one that someone else has written. Same for explorer, the command line shell, any anything else you like.
Modularity always helps consumers, barring other factors. Integration and bundling helps one entity -- Microsoft.
I don't disagree that MS could make a modular version of Windows that would suck, but if done properly, they'd actually have something that UNIX would have a tough time competing with for most users because it'd be so good.
One thing that would be really cool is a goverment review board that would prevent any for-a-fee new versions of Windows from shipping until it passes review. No pass, no ship. Oh, MS would blow zillions on PR, but they'd be free to release service patches, so it'd hardly hurt anyone much. Plus, if the thing got rejected a few times, engineers would have time to actually test and debug those early copies of Windows that everyone always wants to avoid.
206Mzh StrongARM? IIRC, that's barely faster than Apple's Newton, a PDA that's been around forever.
I know... Is a Windows box not a Windows box unless it can get 150 fps on Jedi Knight II at 1600x1200?
And Mozilla is an awful browser. Galeon is a step in the right direction. I like my browsers to be just browser, not mail clients/newsreaders/gopher clients, though...and dillo fits nicely.
I've complained to Dell and Compaq about unnecessary use of Javascript and both were fixed -- Dell actually took things really seriously and even had a user experience person email me with questions. I was deeply impressed.
OTOH, Logitech's web team sucks. I love Logitech mice (the alternative is MS), and since they churn out new models at some ungodly rate, I like to check their website periodically for tech info and a photo of each model. The problem is that the whole stupid site uses Javascript. I emailed their web team twice, and the only thing they did was added text saying "This site may not work properly without Javascript enabled".
If my next mouse isn't a Logitech one, it will be entirely because of the web team and how annoying it is to get simple information on their product line rather than because of product quality -- I've always been quite pleased with Logitech.
Given that accessability is the higest value for most sites (I mean, come on, no one is going to go back daily to Sharp's website because the design look kicks butt), why are so many high-priced developers completely incapable of making webpages that work for everyone?
The thing is that Linux was designed to be flexible. You want this kind of functionality?
echo "\"xwd -out screenshot\"\n shift + alt + printscreen" -e >> ~/.xbindkeys
And voila, you have the same functionality.
Of course, most Linux distros don't turn on all the bells and whistles by default...you get to find 'em.
Okay, I'll bite. What "cool technologies" does MS provide?
".NET allows developers to build very powerful solutions around web services much more quickly". So what about perl and java? What are they?
7x performance? Bullshit. Yes, Java isn't fast, but the limiting factor with modern, good VMs (like IBM's) is *not* the CPU but the fact that it eats RAM like there's no tomorrow. Java generally runs more than 1/7 the speed of a compiled C program. You are not going to convince me that MS's newcomer C# compilers run 7 times faster than Java, which would be faster than C benchmarks.
FreeBSD's multiproc performance is not supposed to be that great -- it's about where Linux 2.2 was when they were in the middle of the big shift towards multiproc.
If you don't run devel kernels, I imagine that Linux, BSD, Solaris, and just about any decent UNIX knockoff is pretty stable.