In the opposite way, Japanese-style RPGs weave the character's background into the story very tightly. Because they do this, they limit the gamers choice. It means in Final Fantasy VI, I can't make the protagonist a 6-foot, muscled black guy. I'm stuck with Terra. On the other hand, it means that at all times, Terra acts like Terra, reacts in ways Terra would, and is generally consistent with her own character.
Then again, Terra seriously rocks as an RPG character. Emotionally insecure former mass-murderer who isn't even completely human and has GREEN hair in a ponytail! The good bit is the green ponytail. But I more or less agree that true RPGs aren't available on computers, if you want those you're better of playing AD&D or any other PnP RPG with a bunch of serious friends.
Serious people are important or else you'll end up with something I had, an RPG where 3 out of 5 characters are female (6 players total) with those 3 female characters constantly being raped and all because the DM was 16. The rest was even more silly, though I did like the bit about the vampire with fake teeth. I killed it.:) But I left those idiots as they started to play a DBZ campaign. AD&D is fun but roleplaying a guy covered in fluorescent yellow paint grunting like he's about to have an orgasm for about 20 minutes is not my forte.
One lobbyist, Emery Simon with the Business Software Alliance, said his group objected to the suggestion in the proposal that overly broad or restrictive intellectual-property rights might in some cases stunt technological innovation and economic growth.
I being former military am ASHAMED of our government right now!
Well, you're not the only american who's ashamed of his goverment. I hear it plenty of times. But sadly, there ARE goverments that bend over massively to US goverment demands. Back here in the NL, our prime minister is a prime example of being a bit too much pro-US, usually agreeing on matters before they are even officially proposed to our goverment by the US goverment. There are officials that are even worse, who I suspect of being nothing more then a meaty puppet for Bush.
And well, let's see... We don't have an overly active SCO-esque thingy going on over here, our stock market scandals are far less far reaching because our legal system doesn't allow for anything spectacular. I could pretty much nuke a small town and get away with an apology, so imagine how strick they are on stock fraud. We DO have our equivalent of the RIAA/MPAA, called "stichting BREIN" (click the pretty little Union Jack (Yes, the english flag.) for an english translation.) which already threatened "major" P2P users. Take a good look at the supporters of the whole organization. Yes, that reads MPAA, Motion Picture Association of America. Supporting anti-piracy here in The Netherlands. Wee. When do we become the nth state of the USA and will I get US citizenship?
Bastards. Both of our goverments. Christian fundamentalist capalists rule the world. Oh rapture!
... of a RFID device with overpowered, omnidirectional antennae, capable of reseting all RFID tags in a store to "Durex Extra Strength Condoms:$999.99:DATE(NOW):CASHIER(CURRENT)" with the press of a button!
What did they add that we didn't have from ICQ/ AOL?
You should ask "What did they remove from ICQ" instead; ICQ as an IM service is pretty nice actually. ICQ as a program is beyond horrible as more then half it's features have got absolutely NOTHING to do with messeging people. Even ICQ "lite". The interface was cluttered and a bitch to use, compared to the MSN interface which is more or less clean, easy to use and doesn't contain allot of needless crap, even though MSN stability was horrid at first; the servers used to die more often then... something which dies allot.
It seems as though NVIDIA still has a stronghold in this market, as their card seems to dominate many of the benchmark runs shown here.
Apart from the fact nvidia got their asses kicked in most benchmarks it does indeed rock, yes. Especially the bit which claims the price for the damned thing is over 1200 USD a piece. Ah well, next time it will be an Ati I guess, considering they both fecking cheat with benchmarks these days I might as well go for the cheapest cheater.
I suddenly remember I work in a computer store and that I have to begin again next Tuesday, in the middle of the SoBig.F storm. Thankfully, I don't have to repair the damned systems. (I'm only the intern, I get to unravel cables and vaccuum the floor instead...) But I already dread the horror stories of stupid people who think it's anything BUT a virus.
Just what I don't need! Shave of all the bullshit and maybe it'll be nice! I'll be pretty happy if they make a little checkbox marked "Fuck off with all ye crap wizards and let's git to configurin' this piece 'o crap!" (irish accent optional) so people can finally make changes to settings without having the deal with 20+ "wizards" you couldn't care less about. If they drop the price down to what it's actually worth, (~20 euro, 25 if I get a pretty box with it) I might even buy instead of waiting for the ISO!
Isn't xmule a X windows capable client for use on the edonkey 2000 peer-to-peer network? I think that at one point, eMule started making clients to connect to the edonkey 2000 (ed2k) whic proved far superior then the native client. Because eMule was/is/might once have been open source, various forks for other operating systems sprung up, xmule being one of them.
Earth Station 5 is spyware free, adware free and contains no popups and/or
annoying advertising. Earth Station 5 is located both in Gaza and in the
Jenin Refugee Camp of Palestine.
That time travel guy, I think. Did you ever get it? That guy who was looking for aliens who had perfected time travel because he needed to go back and fix something? It was a rambling treatise about the nature of time and him trying to convince the reader he was dead serious about this and there didn't seem to be any other point to the thing. No URL, no offer to increase my penis size, nothing.
Did anyone else receive that one? I thought it was nice! It was so full of bullshit (nor noteworthy amongst spam) and... it had no purpose. Spam is usually aimed at stupid and/or gullible people who are willing to believe anything they receive in their mailbox. Even if someone were to believe this one particular spam message, what would one do? Send Mr Fusion to a set of long/lat coordinates IN THE PAST? Is it some kind of joke?
The next time you can't find a job, are opening your wallet to pay for a royal fuck-up by the powers that be, or can't take the classes you want because they've been disolved due to budget cuts, remember that politics should be "fun". We don't need to deal with serious issues here. A geek is running for Governor. Whoo hoo! Who cares that no one seems to think the responsibility is serious?
Seems like all the responsible people seem to fuck up anyways. Isn't it the current CA governor who fucked up the state's energy supplies one way or another? But that's okay, because he's a stereotype politician who answers question with surgical precision and comfortably drones out word by word the speeches prepared for him by his staff of marketers, jurists and various other yesheads. I mean, being able to pay someone to write up speeches with ideal answers is so much more important then a 26 year old who might be naive but at least genuine.
Seriously, haven't you noticed a trend among politicians and CEOs? They ALL fuck up. They horribly fuck up whatever they were supposed to do to make a fortune in a few years, after which they more or less retire and start living a luxurious life of the interest from their accumulated wealth. Do you really think those people are there for YOU!? Most of them are there to make a quick buck, retire early and end up semi-influential as they'll be honorary members of just about anything after being a governor or CEO. They only need to be in office long enough to make a fortune and to win favour with others.
The selections were ridiculous. I would have liked to see "How are you going to dig California out of debt?" But all I got was "Can you deal with dselect?" When the DoJ prosecutors answered our questions did they say "h4h4h4h4, copyright ownz your a55!!!!" Did anyone say "Fuck you, lawyer! Do you jack off to gay porn or what?" No. Slashdotters clearly understood they were dealing with somebody important, something they obviously didn't feel about Georgy Russell when they were asking or moderating these questions. The fault does not all lie on the Slashdotters' heads, but also those who selected the questions.
Well, maybe it had something to do with Goergy having most answers on her site already? Maybe she was interviewed only PARTLY because she's a politician, but more so because she's "one of us" who is currently in the public spotlight? Sure, the fact she's a governor candidate is important too and some questions were related to that, but the standard "What are you going to do about (healthcare|education|infrastructure|financial shortcomings|the energy crisis)?" should be left to journalists who wants the same answers over and over. NO ONE can solve something as serious as any of the aforementioned subject on a short notice. Georgy can't, Arnold can't, the porn peddler can't either. Solving healthcare is going to take more then a few years in office and a few worthless promises.
Maybe you live in some nice cooshy state or perhaps another country where you are blissfully unaware of the problems California has, but I live here and I'd rather not have a potential governor who thinks she's on an IRC channel answering questions for junior high schoolers doing some kind of political project.
Oh yes, all we've got to deal with are silly little things like rising sea levels, (major bummer if most of your country is below sea level) declining ground water levels and our own energy crisis as rivers run too warm so we cant use cooling water anymore. Yet we still manage to survive with a Prime Minister who wouldn't look out of place in a christian-fundamentalist version The Muppet Show.
i thought at one point they said it would remain open...
Oh, it will remain open I think. For anyone willing to cough up an appropriate license fee and willing to sign a pretty little NDA, which basically states your first born will belong to Microsoft.
I'm SICK of anal and short-sighted people. READ the following words which I copy pasted from the original story where the questions were asked: "We'll email Georgy 10 of the highest-moderated questions, and publish her answers (and, yes, the chosen questions in the same post) as soon as she replies." They emailed her the ten most highly moderated posts. If the main part of the community want to ask her those questions, then FINE. Let them ask. I don't throw a goddamn fit over something insignificant like this either. Who cares about vi or emacs (I use nano anyways!) or her underwear!? (Though if she answered "sheer thongs", I would care!)
The Slashdot community wanted those wuestions answered. Now you can just shrug it of, ignore it OR email her yourself with your questions. But for the love of God, toward all the people who are still whining about those questions, stop beating the dead horse. Lick it, fuck it, but in Eris' name, stop beating it! Besides, a bit of humour in politics might be fun. Do you really think that random corrupt 50+ year old balding/grey & wrinkled (ex CEO|major shareholder|relative of former or current president|demoted congressmen) make people interested in politics? Do we HAVE to listen to them mumbling and holding boring conferences where they use 6+ syllable words almost no one knows? Can't people just have some FUN, asking some silly questions to a politician? It's fucking dull enough already.
True, she looks pretty cute alright:) If this who California governor thingy fails, someone tell her to go for Prime Minister in the Netherlands. That stupid bible-thumping Harry Potter clone is massively boring and he bends over for Bush too much...
The Samba released a version of Samba with a security hole big enough to sneak a small african country through. Following the disclosure of the exploit, the Samba team released a patch which, according to the grinning spokesperson of the Samba team, "... is vastly incompatible with any SCO product or system.". Further commentary from the Samba team is unavailable as no one was able to regain composure after laughing at the latest SCO news on slashdot regarding the security hole.
"I find this unacceptable and immoral!", according to Darl McBride, who further commented "Have we sued them yet? Have we? No? Sue them!... What do you mean, 'no legal grounds'?! Goddamn you Chris, you lazy bastard! Just think up some crap for a reason to sue them! Hey, is that mic still on?". Currently, in another barrage of lawsuits, the SCO group filed suit against the Samba team but refuses to disclose what they are actually suing for and also sued this press agency for using copyrighted SMP code in our programs. Our resident VB coder was puzzled. "Is that even possible? Maybe you should ask the HTML guy..."
The following items failed to install. To try installing them again, click Review and install updates, and then click Install Now again.
818529: June 2003, Cumulative Patch for Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1
330994: April 2003, Security Update for Outlook Express 6 SP1
Security Update for Windows 2000 (823980)
823559: Security Update for Microsoft Windows
816093: Security Update Microsoft Virtual Machine (Microsoft VM)
814078: Security Update (Microsoft Jscript version 5.6, Windows 2000, Windows XP)
Security Update, February 13, 2002 (MSXML 3.0)
I like to think that I'm the only person where Windows Update consistently fails HORRIBLY but that'd be naive. At least I tried to apply every critical update. It somehow fails to download the files required. Good thing I got a decent firewall up and running because even the MS patching system is horribly shit. Ah well, that's the first thing to break down on a fresh (less then a week old) Win 2000 install.
This also raises another question: How many people were affected by the worm because Windows Update simply fucked up for them? Even if WU would die on updating for even 1% of all users, how many people would it affect then? I only just found another way to manually download the patches to see if that'll work. Oh and this isn't the first time Windows Update fucks up. I've had it crash PCs, screw up installations and I've made it succesfully install the same patch 5 times in a row.
Woot for Windows Update! Adding another weak link in an already fragile chain which is Windows security!
The Paladin self-propelled artillery units aren't the fastest beatiest around you know, it takes time to set them up and align their cannons properly before reigning down holy fire upon SCO!
Because cargo containers are already used all over the world. It's relatively easy to cram your goods in a container, ship it around by standard means and then then just haul it into space using the space elevator or what-have-ye by then. Space elevators would be idea, because not only do goods go out there, once we start mining/manufacturing, we also need to receive stuff. It's an already proven idea that we have used for quite some time down here. All we'd need to change is to have some specially shielded containers to carry around perishables and other items affected by hard/cosmic radiation.
Hmm, but let's not start too late with it either. We need bulk freighters in space too if we want mining other planets to be profitable and to be able to keep up with bulk mining. Also a nice idea would be to design future craft with room for expansion with prepared power, control and computer access ports at specified places. whenever there's some space left. Because maybe, MAYBE, someone in the future would like to use the (hopefully) standard and common freighter for different uses like scanning various types of interesting stuff (just plug a scanner in one of the slots) or maybe a beacon (plug it in) or an backup autopilot system on automated flights (again, just plug it in an open slot) or maybe even and extra powerful antennae array for long range communications? (plug it in an open slot, you get the idea by now...)
That is, unless you want a small fleet of unusable and outdated freighters rotting about on the back side of the moon in 30 years...
All this interest in space has me worried a bit. Not about people crashing down or reactors being pulverized in the atmosphere, but about the same flaw people made when using other forms of mass transportation for the first time. Standards. For example think of old railways; the rails used to be at different lengths apart, depending on which company owned said railway. That was a major bugger if you had to travel over railways owned by multiple companies. I think that between continents and some countires it's still an issue. And how about shipping? Everything used to be handled individually, using cargo nets and common cranes to lift goods on board. Nowadays everyone uses containers when shipping goods around the world. Lorries/trucks, trains, cranes and various things are used to transport containers around when they reach land and with great efficiency, when compared to the old way of unloading from ship, storing in warehouse, loading in train, transporting, unloading. Also important are pallets, which are more or less standardized these days.
The way this affects the current "space race" (a bit early to call it that but what the hell...) is that everyone is now developing their own transportation system. It's quite obvious that as a method of delivery, the shuttle is an immense failure due to extreme costs and limited capacity and that it's strong points are out of the scope of this comment. What would be ideal would be a solution where spacecraft can lift standard shipping containers (yes, those same ones used all over the world that can be carried around by various methods) into orbit and then to wherever the hell you want them. The fact that contianers are easy to get a hold of for machinery such as cranes should make them quite useful in space for both transport and storage. Just imagine a large structure made out of girders with container clamps all around and a few mobile crans to move stuff around...
Slashdot Mirror
Then again, Terra seriously rocks as an RPG character. Emotionally insecure former mass-murderer who isn't even completely human and has GREEN hair in a ponytail! The good bit is the green ponytail. But I more or less agree that true RPGs aren't available on computers, if you want those you're better of playing AD&D or any other PnP RPG with a bunch of serious friends.
Serious people are important or else you'll end up with something I had, an RPG where 3 out of 5 characters are female (6 players total) with those 3 female characters constantly being raped and all because the DM was 16. The rest was even more silly, though I did like the bit about the vampire with fake teeth. I killed it. :) But I left those idiots as they started to play a DBZ campaign. AD&D is fun but roleplaying a guy covered in fluorescent yellow paint grunting like he's about to have an orgasm for about 20 minutes is not my forte.
So, it's open source that drives our society to technological and economical stagnation! I mean, of course $100.000+ fines, crooked CEOs bent on stock fraud wearing the IP sword (+3, +5 vs trolls) and the fact that users get nailed up the arse in the name of piracy are all good signs of a healthy economy where any technological advancement is sued into oblivion and where economic growth is humongous -- for a select few.
I must cry but there aren't enough tears.
Note: SCO license is a joke too.
Well, you're not the only american who's ashamed of his goverment. I hear it plenty of times. But sadly, there ARE goverments that bend over massively to US goverment demands. Back here in the NL, our prime minister is a prime example of being a bit too much pro-US, usually agreeing on matters before they are even officially proposed to our goverment by the US goverment. There are officials that are even worse, who I suspect of being nothing more then a meaty puppet for Bush.
And well, let's see... We don't have an overly active SCO-esque thingy going on over here, our stock market scandals are far less far reaching because our legal system doesn't allow for anything spectacular. I could pretty much nuke a small town and get away with an apology, so imagine how strick they are on stock fraud. We DO have our equivalent of the RIAA/MPAA, called "stichting BREIN" (click the pretty little Union Jack (Yes, the english flag.) for an english translation.) which already threatened "major" P2P users. Take a good look at the supporters of the whole organization. Yes, that reads MPAA, Motion Picture Association of America. Supporting anti-piracy here in The Netherlands. Wee. When do we become the nth state of the USA and will I get US citizenship?
Bastards. Both of our goverments. Christian fundamentalist capalists rule the world. Oh rapture!
... of a RFID device with overpowered, omnidirectional antennae, capable of reseting all RFID tags in a store to "Durex Extra Strength Condoms:$999.99:DATE(NOW):CASHIER(CURRENT)" with the press of a button!
You should ask "What did they remove from ICQ" instead; ICQ as an IM service is pretty nice actually. ICQ as a program is beyond horrible as more then half it's features have got absolutely NOTHING to do with messeging people. Even ICQ "lite". The interface was cluttered and a bitch to use, compared to the MSN interface which is more or less clean, easy to use and doesn't contain allot of needless crap, even though MSN stability was horrid at first; the servers used to die more often then ... something which dies allot.
Apart from the fact nvidia got their asses kicked in most benchmarks it does indeed rock, yes. Especially the bit which claims the price for the damned thing is over 1200 USD a piece. Ah well, next time it will be an Ati I guess, considering they both fecking cheat with benchmarks these days I might as well go for the cheapest cheater.
Oh shit.
I suddenly remember I work in a computer store and that I have to begin again next Tuesday, in the middle of the SoBig.F storm. Thankfully, I don't have to repair the damned systems. (I'm only the intern, I get to unravel cables and vaccuum the floor instead...) But I already dread the horror stories of stupid people who think it's anything BUT a virus.
Just what I don't need! Shave of all the bullshit and maybe it'll be nice! I'll be pretty happy if they make a little checkbox marked "Fuck off with all ye crap wizards and let's git to configurin' this piece 'o crap!" (irish accent optional) so people can finally make changes to settings without having the deal with 20+ "wizards" you couldn't care less about. If they drop the price down to what it's actually worth, (~20 euro, 25 if I get a pretty box with it) I might even buy instead of waiting for the ISO!
Isn't xmule a X windows capable client for use on the edonkey 2000 peer-to-peer network? I think that at one point, eMule started making clients to connect to the edonkey 2000 (ed2k) whic proved far superior then the native client. Because eMule was/is/might once have been open source, various forks for other operating systems sprung up, xmule being one of them.
HTTP error 506:
Server has been ran over by an Israeli tank.
Did anyone else receive that one? I thought it was nice! It was so full of bullshit (nor noteworthy amongst spam) and... it had no purpose. Spam is usually aimed at stupid and/or gullible people who are willing to believe anything they receive in their mailbox. Even if someone were to believe this one particular spam message, what would one do? Send Mr Fusion to a set of long/lat coordinates IN THE PAST? Is it some kind of joke?
Seems like all the responsible people seem to fuck up anyways. Isn't it the current CA governor who fucked up the state's energy supplies one way or another? But that's okay, because he's a stereotype politician who answers question with surgical precision and comfortably drones out word by word the speeches prepared for him by his staff of marketers, jurists and various other yesheads. I mean, being able to pay someone to write up speeches with ideal answers is so much more important then a 26 year old who might be naive but at least genuine.
Seriously, haven't you noticed a trend among politicians and CEOs? They ALL fuck up. They horribly fuck up whatever they were supposed to do to make a fortune in a few years, after which they more or less retire and start living a luxurious life of the interest from their accumulated wealth. Do you really think those people are there for YOU!? Most of them are there to make a quick buck, retire early and end up semi-influential as they'll be honorary members of just about anything after being a governor or CEO. They only need to be in office long enough to make a fortune and to win favour with others.
Well, maybe it had something to do with Goergy having most answers on her site already? Maybe she was interviewed only PARTLY because she's a politician, but more so because she's "one of us" who is currently in the public spotlight? Sure, the fact she's a governor candidate is important too and some questions were related to that, but the standard "What are you going to do about (healthcare|education|infrastructure|financial shortcomings|the energy crisis)?" should be left to journalists who wants the same answers over and over. NO ONE can solve something as serious as any of the aforementioned subject on a short notice. Georgy can't, Arnold can't, the porn peddler can't either. Solving healthcare is going to take more then a few years in office and a few worthless promises.
Oh yes, all we've got to deal with are silly little things like rising sea levels, (major bummer if most of your country is below sea level) declining ground water levels and our own energy crisis as rivers run too warm so we cant use cooling water anymore. Yet we still manage to survive with a Prime Minister who wouldn't look out of place in a christian-fundamentalist version The Muppet Show.
I'd worry more about SCO claiming copyrights on spunges.
We all know $DEITY stole the idea of spunges from SCO!
Oh, it will remain open I think. For anyone willing to cough up an appropriate license fee and willing to sign a pretty little NDA, which basically states your first born will belong to Microsoft.
ARGH!
I'm SICK of anal and short-sighted people. READ the following words which I copy pasted from the original story where the questions were asked: "We'll email Georgy 10 of the highest-moderated questions, and publish her answers (and, yes, the chosen questions in the same post) as soon as she replies." They emailed her the ten most highly moderated posts. If the main part of the community want to ask her those questions, then FINE. Let them ask. I don't throw a goddamn fit over something insignificant like this either. Who cares about vi or emacs (I use nano anyways!) or her underwear!? (Though if she answered "sheer thongs", I would care!)
The Slashdot community wanted those wuestions answered. Now you can just shrug it of, ignore it OR email her yourself with your questions. But for the love of God, toward all the people who are still whining about those questions, stop beating the dead horse. Lick it, fuck it, but in Eris' name, stop beating it! Besides, a bit of humour in politics might be fun. Do you really think that random corrupt 50+ year old balding/grey & wrinkled (ex CEO|major shareholder|relative of former or current president|demoted congressmen) make people interested in politics? Do we HAVE to listen to them mumbling and holding boring conferences where they use 6+ syllable words almost no one knows? Can't people just have some FUN, asking some silly questions to a politician? It's fucking dull enough already.
True, she looks pretty cute alright :) If this who California governor thingy fails, someone tell her to go for Prime Minister in the Netherlands. That stupid bible-thumping Harry Potter clone is massively boring and he bends over for Bush too much...
The Samba released a version of Samba with a security hole big enough to sneak a small african country through. Following the disclosure of the exploit, the Samba team released a patch which, according to the grinning spokesperson of the Samba team, "... is vastly incompatible with any SCO product or system.". Further commentary from the Samba team is unavailable as no one was able to regain composure after laughing at the latest SCO news on slashdot regarding the security hole.
"I find this unacceptable and immoral!", according to Darl McBride, who further commented "Have we sued them yet? Have we? No? Sue them! ... What do you mean, 'no legal grounds'?! Goddamn you Chris, you lazy bastard! Just think up some crap for a reason to sue them! Hey, is that mic still on?". Currently, in another barrage of lawsuits, the SCO group filed suit against the Samba team but refuses to disclose what they are actually suing for and also sued this press agency for using copyrighted SMP code in our programs. Our resident VB coder was puzzled. "Is that even possible? Maybe you should ask the HTML guy..."
I like to think that I'm the only person where Windows Update consistently fails HORRIBLY but that'd be naive. At least I tried to apply every critical update. It somehow fails to download the files required. Good thing I got a decent firewall up and running because even the MS patching system is horribly shit. Ah well, that's the first thing to break down on a fresh (less then a week old) Win 2000 install.
This also raises another question: How many people were affected by the worm because Windows Update simply fucked up for them? Even if WU would die on updating for even 1% of all users, how many people would it affect then? I only just found another way to manually download the patches to see if that'll work. Oh and this isn't the first time Windows Update fucks up. I've had it crash PCs, screw up installations and I've made it succesfully install the same patch 5 times in a row.
Woot for Windows Update! Adding another weak link in an already fragile chain which is Windows security!
The following patch will do the following to your system:
Ok - Ok - I'm Bill's towel boy, spank me please and install the patch!
... slowly and calmly.
The Paladin self-propelled artillery units aren't the fastest beatiest around you know, it takes time to set them up and align their cannons properly before reigning down holy fire upon SCO!
Because cargo containers are already used all over the world. It's relatively easy to cram your goods in a container, ship it around by standard means and then then just haul it into space using the space elevator or what-have-ye by then. Space elevators would be idea, because not only do goods go out there, once we start mining/manufacturing, we also need to receive stuff. It's an already proven idea that we have used for quite some time down here. All we'd need to change is to have some specially shielded containers to carry around perishables and other items affected by hard/cosmic radiation.
Hmm, but let's not start too late with it either. We need bulk freighters in space too if we want mining other planets to be profitable and to be able to keep up with bulk mining. Also a nice idea would be to design future craft with room for expansion with prepared power, control and computer access ports at specified places. whenever there's some space left. Because maybe, MAYBE, someone in the future would like to use the (hopefully) standard and common freighter for different uses like scanning various types of interesting stuff (just plug a scanner in one of the slots) or maybe a beacon (plug it in) or an backup autopilot system on automated flights (again, just plug it in an open slot) or maybe even and extra powerful antennae array for long range communications? (plug it in an open slot, you get the idea by now...)
That is, unless you want a small fleet of unusable and outdated freighters rotting about on the back side of the moon in 30 years...
All this interest in space has me worried a bit. Not about people crashing down or reactors being pulverized in the atmosphere, but about the same flaw people made when using other forms of mass transportation for the first time. Standards. For example think of old railways; the rails used to be at different lengths apart, depending on which company owned said railway. That was a major bugger if you had to travel over railways owned by multiple companies. I think that between continents and some countires it's still an issue. And how about shipping? Everything used to be handled individually, using cargo nets and common cranes to lift goods on board. Nowadays everyone uses containers when shipping goods around the world. Lorries/trucks, trains, cranes and various things are used to transport containers around when they reach land and with great efficiency, when compared to the old way of unloading from ship, storing in warehouse, loading in train, transporting, unloading. Also important are pallets, which are more or less standardized these days.
The way this affects the current "space race" (a bit early to call it that but what the hell...) is that everyone is now developing their own transportation system. It's quite obvious that as a method of delivery, the shuttle is an immense failure due to extreme costs and limited capacity and that it's strong points are out of the scope of this comment. What would be ideal would be a solution where spacecraft can lift standard shipping containers (yes, those same ones used all over the world that can be carried around by various methods) into orbit and then to wherever the hell you want them. The fact that contianers are easy to get a hold of for machinery such as cranes should make them quite useful in space for both transport and storage. Just imagine a large structure made out of girders with container clamps all around and a few mobile crans to move stuff around...