Yeah, we can experience the good ol' days of OpenGL vs D3D vs Rendition vs Glide all over again. Colour me excited. Or not.
While competition may sound nice, for game developers (of which I am one) and gamers alike, in the end the goal is to be able to make or play a game without having to consider a zillion different rendering/physics/sound APIs, including the many limitations only supporting one of them may bring with it. We should be grateful that we are now left with 2 rendering APIs (OGL and D3D) which all cards (more or less) support. Let's hope that the same thing happens for physics really soon. It seems that nVidia is at least attempting to make this happen, which is encouraging.
Even better. An instruction set like x86, MIPS, PPC, ARM and so on can not be patented or licensed. It is a pipe dream from Intel (and others) and a perversion of the system that people think that an API could be patented or licensed. That would be like a project such as ReactOS (Windows clone) getting nuked by MSFT because it had the nerve to use its proprietary, license-only APIs. Heck, you better buy a license if you want to program anything which uses the Windows API...
There are perfectly valid patents and such related to x86/CPU technology, but the x86 API isn't one of them.
Yup, I just use Hotmail for registrations and such which I'm sure may result in spam and other unwanted messages. It's a serious pain to know whether you have got new messages (I don't use MSN), so I hardly use it. GMail's IMAP function on the other hand is perfect. It really elevates this email service from Yet Another Web-Based Email to something that is actually usable and integrates well with my normal work flow.
In essence one could say that the issue in this case is _not_ with SSL, but with HTTP, and similar protocols which have never considered security except as an afterthought (HTTPS is plain HTTP over SSL).
FTPS for example, which is FTP over SSL, is hardly used at all and instead protocols like SCP reign for secure FTP. If people would just stop what they're doing for a moment and realize that the issue is that we're using an inherently unsecure, stateless protocol wrapped inside a security blanket for transactions and communications vital to world economies. In my opinion it would be unfair to say that end users should 'just pay attention'. I know very well that I don't scrutinize everything whenever I'm buying something online or using my bank's web interface.
The solution to this is really to stop using HTTPS for 'secure' access and use something better, even if it means a lot of 'inconvenience'. Seriously, sometimes we all love to play Russian roulette with our finances and more...
6-bit TN panels don't seem like such a good idea to me, as the interpolation (rapid cycling of pixels to get the desired colour) used to compensate for the lack of full 16.7 million colours other screens have is (together with the flickering of CCFL backlights) responsible for most of the complaints about LCD screens giving people a headache.
As for the article topic, any screen with an input lag of >1 ms will never be 'good' at displaying rapidly changing images, and will be nearly worthless for rapidly-paced games. Plasma, CRT, SED, FED, OLED... all technologies with sub-1 ms latency. Getting that 15" OLED screen LG will be releasing this year as a monitor may not be such a bad idea. Sure, it's not as big as your 24" LCD, but it will have perfect colours and blacks, extremely low-latency, low power-usage, weigh even less than an LCD, and so on.
Let's admit it, LCDs were just an intermediate technology for displays as margins in the CRT market got lower and lower, while new display technologies which could match or beat CRTs in IQ and other factors were still a while off.
How is this a technological problem? How is a user failing to properly read and/or comprehend that the email he or she just received is trying to scam him/her out of money or (personal) information or worse a technological problem? What if a user gets infected by a virus/trojan/worm/rootkit because he had to click on the executable attached to the email received from either a stranger, or from a person who would never send such an email (at least not unannounced)?
Spam is a matter of social engineering, of convincing someone to buy a product, give out information or click on a random executable, even though every rational fibre in that person's body should warn against doing so. Yes, using something more robust than SMTP would help, but it's no cure against stupidity and botnets.
I like this initiative, I just wish it would target those who are already at risk of 'stupid-clicking' instead of those with more than one braincell. It's disappointing that those who do respond to spam emails (twice or so...) don't get taken out of the gene pool either:(
Kind of. Yes, it is documented (1,000 page spec), it can be written and read by open tools (hint: PDF content isn't changed directly, sections of it are replaced, new sections are pasted in and the old ones amended at the end). That PDFs more or less print the same any time is more due to luck than because it's such a good spec. There are still elements in PDF (look at the recent GIMP review at Arstechnica for example), which are rendered differently in different viewers.
I have written a tool which modified existing PDFs. Let me tell you that PDF is a worthless specification. If you're used to the simplicity of SGML, you'll find the PDF spec about as friendly as the jungle by night. Even with a colleague assisting me it still took us a few weeks to implement a simple tool which only had to add a single field to a PDF at a particular location. A 10 minute job with SGML/XML (PDFs also include an XML section at the end... why?) turned into a week-long ordeal by PDF.
Let's face it, PDFs are only meant to be created once and never to be edited again. It's bad enough to write a viewer for PDFs as PDF doesn't use any kind of 'flow' model or anything I could describe in fewer words than a small novel.
It's kind of like the ODF spec (also a huge mess inside), only much, much worse. Don't believe me? Get a copy of the PDF spec and read it;)
It is very hard to get started in a big (open source) project. Not just because programmers *hate* documenting things, let alone commenting their own code. Add to this that OOo is a mature product, doesn't have a lot of features which could be added, which compares to the eternal TODO list of the Linux kernel, or the ReactOS project (which I am participating in as developer).
If there is one thing OOo could use it's a severe simplification of its design to slim it down size and resource-wise, but beyond that it's pretty much feature-complete for 99% of its users.
On a completely unrelated sidenote, did anyone look at the ODF spec? To me it looks nearly as convoluted as the PDF spec (which I've used to write an editor with at one point). Does such a complex format spring forth from a convoluted and complex (crufty) codebase?
Oh sure, but when one type of media wears out after 6 months of 24/7 writes and the other still keeps happily writing along after 5-10 years of 24/7 writes, I'll go with the latter, thank you very much.
Don't forget that electric/hybrid cars can do one thing which ICEs can't, and that is things like capturing energy from braking and storing that to then accelerate the car again using this energy. Using the brakes in an ICE car is really inefficient and thus the reason why aggressive driving in such a car leads to such poor mileage.
I've been misdiagnosed a few times by now as well for the condition I'm suffering from. My own research made me believe I knew in which direction to search, but with no apparent interest from doctors to diagnose me while also running into more practical concerns (no surgeon is going to cut open a healthy patient...). If I am to believe the last doctor I talked with then I'm not even sure how to diagnose myself, nor did she have a clue. I'm still waiting for her to get back to me on it with something useful.
My own research has come to a stop as I don't know what else to look at any more. I really wish I could find out more, though:(
Well, I have been blogging on Blogger since late last year (see my sig, or http://mayaposch.blogspot.com/ for those with sigs turned off) and for my purposes it's more than sufficient. I write the blog posts locally in an editor, then copy-paste them to the WYSIWYG editor of Blogger, of which I only use the spell-check function, which is okay, add some tags and publish the thing.
With such a kind of interaction it's hard to find many faults with Blogger's setup:) Regardless, I'll soon, within a month, be moving the blog to my local domain (mayaposch.com, should be active in a few days). In addition to a custom OS I'll be using custom blog software. Best thing about a custom blog is the integration with your site and adding the features only _you_ need:P
Would it be too obvious to point out that what enables abuse of services including spam and such in the first place are botnets?
Kill the botnets and you kill spam. A technological solution to a mostly technological problem. Oh, and you'd stop DDoS attacks at the same time, along with other nasty stuff. Sometimes it pays to go for the root of the issue.
You might want to reconsider putting such a cheap PSU in that system. From everything I've seen in PSU benchmarks such as those posted at hardocp.com (including such budget PSUs), PSUs for less than $90 are quite likely to be a hazard to the rest of the system. Together with the mainboard, the PSU is one thing you really don't want to go cheap on. Don't forget to read benchmarks, though. Some manufacturers like to put some really horrible junk up for sale at really inflated prices.
One issue which is often overlooked is the way MSFT handles returned (broken) units. Instead of sending back a brand-new unit every time, they've got this pool of refurb units, which appear to be largely a pile of lemons, meaning that the moment someone hits a bad, new unit, chances are that s/he will receive refurb units which'll fail soon as well, for the simple fact that they're lemons with more defects than MSFT seems to be able to fix.
This would explain why a significant number of people have gone through 3-4 units before receiving one which doesn't give a RROD or such after a few weeks/months. It'd also indicate that the bottom line is more important to MSFT than good customer service.
Specification for ROM size was up to 330 megabits, hence the system displaying "MAX 330 MEGA - PRO GEAR SPEC" upon startup. While no technical changes were required to achieve it, some games over 100 megabits followed this screen by displaying an animation touting "The 100 Mega Shock". The original ROM size spec was later enhanced on cartridges with bank switching memory technology, increasing the maximum cartridge size to around 716 Mbit. These new cartridges also caused the system to display "GIGA POWER" upon startup, indicating this enhancement.
So think roughly N64 cartridge sizes.
"rtt writes "After some accused them of faking screenshots, Project Gotham Racing 3 developer Bizarre Creations have released some more information to prove their critics wrong. Thanks to the extra grunt of Xbox 360, trackside buildings are covered in 1024x1024 textures that are so detailed, they really do look like almost photo realistic. From the article: 'This week, the debate moves on to Textures. Thanks to the extra grunt of the Xbox 360's ATI-designed Xenos GPU, the trackside eye candy is clothed in super-sharp 1024x1024 textures, rendered in astounding detail.'""
Welcome to the Department of Redundancy Department:P
Luck in say 5 years or so. Take a look at their current status. It is somewhere between 95 and NT 3.1 but nowhere near even their full capabilities. Forget 2k or XP.
That page is hopelessly outdated and efforts are underway to give the website a much needed update. If you want to know the real status, check the mailing lists, blogs, forum and wiki.
"There's a real fine line between doing something that no one else is doing versus doing something because you don't like the way other people did it. I'd be open to switching my OS if a new OS did everything that my existing OS did *and* added a bunch of new stuff that made the effort worthwhile. My (admittedly limited) experience with alternative OS projects is that they're trying to solve problems that others have already solved. A new OS probably won't make that much of a difference to me."
Well, if you're using Windows right now, then you're in luck:
Basically, ReactOS is a clone of Windows NT-based OSs (NT, Win2k, WinXP), and thus aims to provide full compatibility with virtually all applications and drivers currently available for these OSs.
Since it's released under the GPL, lots of interesting stuff can be done to it if someone is so inclined, including adding features many people want, but MSFT doesn't consider important enough to add.
The next big release (0.3.0) will finally make networking easy to use, as well as many other improvements. To give an idea of its capabilities, one can run Unreal Tournament hardware-accelerated with the standard, unpatched version of UT and the standard nVidia drivers.
You said it. This was simply one more of those 'look at the pretty colours'-types of reviews.
Some things which bothered me in this review:
- This PSU doesn't use XLR connectors, but bayonet catches. XLR connectors are used for professional audio applications.
- Those heatsinks are a joke for what is a PSU which might do around 450 - 500 W (compensated for 25 -> 40 degrees testing environment). Without the 120 mm fan this unit will probably choke and die within minutes.
- A real PSU test involves measuring each rail under varying, dynamic or static loads, for which you'll need more than an overclocked PC. Pushing the PSU to, and beyond its rated output is standard.
- Ripple on voltage rails is measured in mVs, and requires more than a fancy piece of monitoring software reading the mainboard's sensors (which are never accurate enough).
- I really hope that the multimeter she used in this review was not calibrated, because a constant +/- 2.5% overvoltage on the +12 V rails is NOT healthy. There's a reason why professional PSUs, like PC Power & Cooling can have 3% and lower tolerance on its rails.
- Those +12 V ratings look quite weak for a 580 Watt PSU; even the EURO 50,-, 350 Watt Enermax PSU in my main system has around the same ratings on its single +12 V rail as this PSU has on both rails combined.
In other words, this review sucks:) as does the tested PSU in all probability.
For a while I've been looking at different CMSs to use with my site, and the one which consistently came to the foreground as the easiest and possibly the best option for a community-driven (i.e. with forums and other means of user activity/feedback) CMS in discussions, is XOOPS.
Just now browsing through the Drupal site, I'm left totally unimpressed by the forums and general features their own site seems to offer, not to mention that the screenshot gallery appears to have some CSS issues with Firefox.
"With the technology available for identifying uncureable diseases before they manifest themselves, would you want to know?"
When a cure or treatment is available: usually yes.
If no cure or treatment is available things become a bit less clear, but what if by the time the illness manifests itself, a cure is available, but it's only effective prior to the first symptoms?
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, we can experience the good ol' days of OpenGL vs D3D vs Rendition vs Glide all over again. Colour me excited. Or not.
While competition may sound nice, for game developers (of which I am one) and gamers alike, in the end the goal is to be able to make or play a game without having to consider a zillion different rendering/physics/sound APIs, including the many limitations only supporting one of them may bring with it. We should be grateful that we are now left with 2 rendering APIs (OGL and D3D) which all cards (more or less) support. Let's hope that the same thing happens for physics really soon. It seems that nVidia is at least attempting to make this happen, which is encouraging.
Even better. An instruction set like x86, MIPS, PPC, ARM and so on can not be patented or licensed. It is a pipe dream from Intel (and others) and a perversion of the system that people think that an API could be patented or licensed. That would be like a project such as ReactOS (Windows clone) getting nuked by MSFT because it had the nerve to use its proprietary, license-only APIs. Heck, you better buy a license if you want to program anything which uses the Windows API...
There are perfectly valid patents and such related to x86/CPU technology, but the x86 API isn't one of them.
Yup, I just use Hotmail for registrations and such which I'm sure may result in spam and other unwanted messages. It's a serious pain to know whether you have got new messages (I don't use MSN), so I hardly use it. GMail's IMAP function on the other hand is perfect. It really elevates this email service from Yet Another Web-Based Email to something that is actually usable and integrates well with my normal work flow.
Great job, Google.
In essence one could say that the issue in this case is _not_ with SSL, but with HTTP, and similar protocols which have never considered security except as an afterthought (HTTPS is plain HTTP over SSL).
FTPS for example, which is FTP over SSL, is hardly used at all and instead protocols like SCP reign for secure FTP. If people would just stop what they're doing for a moment and realize that the issue is that we're using an inherently unsecure, stateless protocol wrapped inside a security blanket for transactions and communications vital to world economies. In my opinion it would be unfair to say that end users should 'just pay attention'. I know very well that I don't scrutinize everything whenever I'm buying something online or using my bank's web interface.
The solution to this is really to stop using HTTPS for 'secure' access and use something better, even if it means a lot of 'inconvenience'. Seriously, sometimes we all love to play Russian roulette with our finances and more...
6-bit TN panels don't seem like such a good idea to me, as the interpolation (rapid cycling of pixels to get the desired colour) used to compensate for the lack of full 16.7 million colours other screens have is (together with the flickering of CCFL backlights) responsible for most of the complaints about LCD screens giving people a headache.
As for the article topic, any screen with an input lag of >1 ms will never be 'good' at displaying rapidly changing images, and will be nearly worthless for rapidly-paced games. Plasma, CRT, SED, FED, OLED... all technologies with sub-1 ms latency. Getting that 15" OLED screen LG will be releasing this year as a monitor may not be such a bad idea. Sure, it's not as big as your 24" LCD, but it will have perfect colours and blacks, extremely low-latency, low power-usage, weigh even less than an LCD, and so on.
Let's admit it, LCDs were just an intermediate technology for displays as margins in the CRT market got lower and lower, while new display technologies which could match or beat CRTs in IQ and other factors were still a while off.
How is this a technological problem? How is a user failing to properly read and/or comprehend that the email he or she just received is trying to scam him/her out of money or (personal) information or worse a technological problem? What if a user gets infected by a virus/trojan/worm/rootkit because he had to click on the executable attached to the email received from either a stranger, or from a person who would never send such an email (at least not unannounced)?
:(
Spam is a matter of social engineering, of convincing someone to buy a product, give out information or click on a random executable, even though every rational fibre in that person's body should warn against doing so. Yes, using something more robust than SMTP would help, but it's no cure against stupidity and botnets.
I like this initiative, I just wish it would target those who are already at risk of 'stupid-clicking' instead of those with more than one braincell. It's disappointing that those who do respond to spam emails (twice or so...) don't get taken out of the gene pool either
Kind of. Yes, it is documented (1,000 page spec), it can be written and read by open tools (hint: PDF content isn't changed directly, sections of it are replaced, new sections are pasted in and the old ones amended at the end). That PDFs more or less print the same any time is more due to luck than because it's such a good spec. There are still elements in PDF (look at the recent GIMP review at Arstechnica for example), which are rendered differently in different viewers.
;)
I have written a tool which modified existing PDFs. Let me tell you that PDF is a worthless specification. If you're used to the simplicity of SGML, you'll find the PDF spec about as friendly as the jungle by night. Even with a colleague assisting me it still took us a few weeks to implement a simple tool which only had to add a single field to a PDF at a particular location. A 10 minute job with SGML/XML (PDFs also include an XML section at the end... why?) turned into a week-long ordeal by PDF.
Let's face it, PDFs are only meant to be created once and never to be edited again. It's bad enough to write a viewer for PDFs as PDF doesn't use any kind of 'flow' model or anything I could describe in fewer words than a small novel.
It's kind of like the ODF spec (also a huge mess inside), only much, much worse. Don't believe me? Get a copy of the PDF spec and read it
Can We Create Fun Games Automatically?
Sure we can, depending on your definition of the words 'Fun', 'Game' and 'Automatically'.
:P
It is very hard to get started in a big (open source) project. Not just because programmers *hate* documenting things, let alone commenting their own code. Add to this that OOo is a mature product, doesn't have a lot of features which could be added, which compares to the eternal TODO list of the Linux kernel, or the ReactOS project (which I am participating in as developer).
If there is one thing OOo could use it's a severe simplification of its design to slim it down size and resource-wise, but beyond that it's pretty much feature-complete for 99% of its users.
On a completely unrelated sidenote, did anyone look at the ODF spec? To me it looks nearly as convoluted as the PDF spec (which I've used to write an editor with at one point). Does such a complex format spring forth from a convoluted and complex (crufty) codebase?
Actually, HDDs also have limited writes.
Oh sure, but when one type of media wears out after 6 months of 24/7 writes and the other still keeps happily writing along after 5-10 years of 24/7 writes, I'll go with the latter, thank you very much.
Don't forget that electric/hybrid cars can do one thing which ICEs can't, and that is things like capturing energy from braking and storing that to then accelerate the car again using this energy. Using the brakes in an ICE car is really inefficient and thus the reason why aggressive driving in such a car leads to such poor mileage.
I've been misdiagnosed a few times by now as well for the condition I'm suffering from. My own research made me believe I knew in which direction to search, but with no apparent interest from doctors to diagnose me while also running into more practical concerns (no surgeon is going to cut open a healthy patient...). If I am to believe the last doctor I talked with then I'm not even sure how to diagnose myself, nor did she have a clue. I'm still waiting for her to get back to me on it with something useful.
:(
My own research has come to a stop as I don't know what else to look at any more. I really wish I could find out more, though
My site is www.MayaPosch.com for those who want to know more.
Moderation: -1, Disturbing
:P
Seriously, that was one hell of a mental image you just conjured
Well, I have been blogging on Blogger since late last year (see my sig, or http://mayaposch.blogspot.com/ for those with sigs turned off) and for my purposes it's more than sufficient. I write the blog posts locally in an editor, then copy-paste them to the WYSIWYG editor of Blogger, of which I only use the spell-check function, which is okay, add some tags and publish the thing.
With such a kind of interaction it's hard to find many faults with Blogger's setup :) Regardless, I'll soon, within a month, be moving the blog to my local domain (mayaposch.com, should be active in a few days). In addition to a custom OS I'll be using custom blog software. Best thing about a custom blog is the integration with your site and adding the features only _you_ need :P
Would it be too obvious to point out that what enables abuse of services including spam and such in the first place are botnets?
Kill the botnets and you kill spam. A technological solution to a mostly technological problem. Oh, and you'd stop DDoS attacks at the same time, along with other nasty stuff. Sometimes it pays to go for the root of the issue.
That's how an artist says that he has not a clue what he is talking about, and ran out of practical ideas about ten years ago.
:P
Modern art: learn it, love it~
You might want to reconsider putting such a cheap PSU in that system. From everything I've seen in PSU benchmarks such as those posted at hardocp.com (including such budget PSUs), PSUs for less than $90 are quite likely to be a hazard to the rest of the system. Together with the mainboard, the PSU is one thing you really don't want to go cheap on. Don't forget to read benchmarks, though. Some manufacturers like to put some really horrible junk up for sale at really inflated prices.
;)
Buy responsible, buy informed
One issue which is often overlooked is the way MSFT handles returned (broken) units. Instead of sending back a brand-new unit every time, they've got this pool of refurb units, which appear to be largely a pile of lemons, meaning that the moment someone hits a bad, new unit, chances are that s/he will receive refurb units which'll fail soon as well, for the simple fact that they're lemons with more defects than MSFT seems to be able to fix.
This would explain why a significant number of people have gone through 3-4 units before receiving one which doesn't give a RROD or such after a few weeks/months. It'd also indicate that the bottom line is more important to MSFT than good customer service.
Specification for ROM size was up to 330 megabits, hence the system displaying "MAX 330 MEGA - PRO GEAR SPEC" upon startup. While no technical changes were required to achieve it, some games over 100 megabits followed this screen by displaying an animation touting "The 100 Mega Shock". The original ROM size spec was later enhanced on cartridges with bank switching memory technology, increasing the maximum cartridge size to around 716 Mbit. These new cartridges also caused the system to display "GIGA POWER" upon startup, indicating this enhancement.
So think roughly N64 cartridge sizes.
"rtt writes "After some accused them of faking screenshots, Project Gotham Racing 3 developer Bizarre Creations have released some more information to prove their critics wrong. Thanks to the extra grunt of Xbox 360, trackside buildings are covered in 1024x1024 textures that are so detailed, they really do look like almost photo realistic. From the article: 'This week, the debate moves on to Textures. Thanks to the extra grunt of the Xbox 360's ATI-designed Xenos GPU, the trackside eye candy is clothed in super-sharp 1024x1024 textures, rendered in astounding detail.'""
Welcome to the Department of Redundancy Department :P
Luck in say 5 years or so. Take a look at their current status. It is somewhere between 95 and NT 3.1 but nowhere near even their full capabilities. Forget 2k or XP.
That page is hopelessly outdated and efforts are underway to give the website a much needed update. If you want to know the real status, check the mailing lists, blogs, forum and wiki.
"There's a real fine line between doing something that no one else is doing versus doing something because you don't like the way other people did it. I'd be open to switching my OS if a new OS did everything that my existing OS did *and* added a bunch of new stuff that made the effort worthwhile. My (admittedly limited) experience with alternative OS projects is that they're trying to solve problems that others have already solved. A new OS probably won't make that much of a difference to me."
Well, if you're using Windows right now, then you're in luck:
ReactOS.com
ReactOS.net.tc - Application Compatibility List (incomplete)
Basically, ReactOS is a clone of Windows NT-based OSs (NT, Win2k, WinXP), and thus aims to provide full compatibility with virtually all applications and drivers currently available for these OSs.
Since it's released under the GPL, lots of interesting stuff can be done to it if someone is so inclined, including adding features many people want, but MSFT doesn't consider important enough to add.
The next big release (0.3.0) will finally make networking easy to use, as well as many other improvements. To give an idea of its capabilities, one can run Unreal Tournament hardware-accelerated with the standard, unpatched version of UT and the standard nVidia drivers.
You said it. This was simply one more of those 'look at the pretty colours'-types of reviews.
:) as does the tested PSU in all probability.
Some things which bothered me in this review:
- This PSU doesn't use XLR connectors, but bayonet catches. XLR connectors are used for professional audio applications.
- Those heatsinks are a joke for what is a PSU which might do around 450 - 500 W (compensated for 25 -> 40 degrees testing environment). Without the 120 mm fan this unit will probably choke and die within minutes.
- A real PSU test involves measuring each rail under varying, dynamic or static loads, for which you'll need more than an overclocked PC. Pushing the PSU to, and beyond its rated output is standard.
- Ripple on voltage rails is measured in mVs, and requires more than a fancy piece of monitoring software reading the mainboard's sensors (which are never accurate enough).
- I really hope that the multimeter she used in this review was not calibrated, because a constant +/- 2.5% overvoltage on the +12 V rails is NOT healthy. There's a reason why professional PSUs, like PC Power & Cooling can have 3% and lower tolerance on its rails.
- Those +12 V ratings look quite weak for a 580 Watt PSU; even the EURO 50,-, 350 Watt Enermax PSU in my main system has around the same ratings on its single +12 V rail as this PSU has on both rails combined.
In other words, this review sucks
For a while I've been looking at different CMSs to use with my site, and the one which consistently came to the foreground as the easiest and possibly the best option for a community-driven (i.e. with forums and other means of user activity/feedback) CMS in discussions, is XOOPS.
Just now browsing through the Drupal site, I'm left totally unimpressed by the forums and general features their own site seems to offer, not to mention that the screenshot gallery appears to have some CSS issues with Firefox.
"With the technology available for identifying uncureable diseases before they manifest themselves, would you want to know?"
When a cure or treatment is available: usually yes.
If no cure or treatment is available things become a bit less clear, but what if by the time the illness manifests itself, a cure is available, but it's only effective prior to the first symptoms?
Sometimes ignorance kills.