Well...not quite. Granted, OpenGL was awfull for a year or so. But afterwards and for the time when their GFX cards were "current", releases were, IMHO, perfectly timed - not too often for them to be a hassle, often enough so there were absolutelly no problems (I miss that on Nv or ATI...).
When G-series chips were relegated mostly to 2D stuff...they still got updates (once a year on average). My G400, 10 years old card, has drivers for 64bit Vista...can you say the same about TNT2?
As for Marvel G400 ("G400's TV card") - this was due to driver model changes in newer Windows. Supposedly it was impossible to make the card fully working (some hacked up drivers showed up, but without support of hardware MJPEG chip)
Check their website. This G400 of yours has new drivers even for 64bit Vista. (though I suspect without 3D acceleration; mostly for their MMS stuff, which uses the same chips so they also make it available for "mainstream" cards of distant past)
TBH I'm not so sure in the case of GeForce1...yes, conceptually it was significant shift...for a PC, a prelude to later "explosion" of features in pc GPUs and their programmability.
But during its lifetime GF1 didn't really change much, in practice. By pairing GFX card from the "previous" generation with a powerfull CPU you could still play everything completelly comfortably.
Well, if you insist solely on physics - that big car of yours has much worse handling, lower probability of actually avoiding a collision, and much higher probability of rollover. Stats seem to confirm it - percentage of accidents with SUVs is much higher than their share of the market would suggest. Ditto for lethal ones (there goes you safety...)
You activelly, by your own choice, make the road more dangerous, overall.
PS. Immediatelly, from the top of my head, I can name two instances when I probably actively avoided an accident thanks to still having control, though close to the edge (one case of possible high speed spin on the highway (and who knows what afterwards) - need of rapid steering during high speed driving + rain; one which would end up probably on a tree/rolling down small hill - loosing grip on gravel (yeah...wtf?!) on a bend on top of a hill). You need agile car to be actively safe.
What I wrote mostly stems from the mantra "if a device/component was way outside its operating conditions, it shouldn't be trusted before thourough check". OTOH it seems the "steel car" just got a visual check, without confirming geometry/etc. Could linkage areas (whatever their method is...) between individual components be potentially suspect in case of such a car, for example?
Diesels do not work properly in regimes of work in current hybrids. I'll quote buddy of mine:
My forecast is that, in 5 years or so, the difficulties of a diesel hybrid will have been resolved, so we'll be looking at ~3 l/100 km for a family-sized car. How? I don't know yet but I know of 2 companies working on it. Experimental pre-production series within about 18-24 months (prototypes already running). However, the solution is not easy because diesels do not lend themselves easily to it. I suspect the answer may be in variable capacity dual-fuel engines.... Something to do with the stress of frequent stop/start of a hot engine knocking hell out of the big ends. Don't know the details but I believe that, under some circumstances, you may get ignition before the piston reaches TDC. I surmise that it may be because there is a dose of unburnt fuel in a cylinder after a stop which is still atomised at a start a few seconds later. If it happened in an ignition fired engine, it would fire only when there is a spark, so it's harmless, but in a diesel there is less control. Remember that inching in a hybrid may stop and start the engine every second or two.
Other solution, apart from what he mentions, are serial hybrids.
Furthermore, it is somewhat likely that, while the elements of steel car didn't crumple, they did develop some internal cracks/etc. under the stresses of collision.
In the next crush "steel car guy" might for a nasty surprise when they'll fail catastrophically...
In some cases of stationary objects that you mention, hitting them would be likely YOUR FRAKKING FAULT, bigtime. Besides, they would probably remain stationary throughout the collision, so the trick of "letting the other car deal with my energy" (like you would have the right...) wouldn't work anyway.
In other cases - the vector / main mass of collision would be one the windshield (unless you're opting to drive something not only large, but ridiculously large)
a) bigger cars aren't necessarily more safe for its occupants (mostly because SUVs are built with 20 year old tech; accidentally, making small cars safer involves much more than simply reselling old tech in new package)
b) it's quite easy to modify big & heavy cars in such a way that smaller cars aren't really at a big disadvantage (properly flexible, properly low bumpers on new big trucks for example - but of course, SUVs wouldn't be as "manly" anymore)
BTW, it many (most?) of european countries city limit is 50 km/h nowadays.
In that case (super-tribes) I must agree...to large degree. You ignore many other manifestations of culture which were and are used as a differentiating factor.
And also that many of them, depending on the circumstances/times, weren't that important at all (for example, concept of nationalitities is a relatively new invention/reinvention in Europe)
PS. Can't help but wonder...it still works in behaviours on social networking sites. Generally, even among the "pokemon collectors", nobody has more than few hundred contacts, which could probably fit into the size of Homo sapiens extended standard ("non-super") tribe. Some even limit themselves only to well-known social circle. But to have several thousands followers...there must be some "cultural artifact" that bonds them together.
Can't help but wonder...why they were constantly replacing the cooking elements anyway?;p
And as for ending conclusion...well, it depends. The beduins definatelly weren't stupid - as you said, it was a matter of customs, culinary preferences and taste.
The local sheik definatelly wasn't stupid either; actually, quite the contrary - he was using one of the traits of intelligence: extrapolating accumulated knowledge to new situation (sadly, it didn't work because of quite different modes of operation of cold things/"traditional arab air conditioning" (look it up) he was accustomed to and fridge; but that's besides the point, our intelligence does fail us sometimes, especially when we aren't aware of additional factors)
However, if the thing with hitchhikers was true in some cases (I have my doubts...) this would imply some of them were, in fact...stupid; failing to extrapolate. Camels can run quite fast too and it would be a bad idea to get off them then too. Heck, tripping over when you run on hard surface is generally to be avoided...
You would think then that Excel is at least accurate (links here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnumeric )? Or that it's possible to install some other software alongside OOo, to have Visio equivalents?;p
Now, more seriously...
What you say is of course valid - some people absolutelly require certain funcionalities of MS Office (though I do wonder sometimes what they did before those features?;) ).
But...this in NO WAY explains the dominant position of MS Office on the market. Heck, even OpenOffice is total overkill - vast majority of people I know have (pirated) MS Office installed only so they can:
a) Create horrible presentations with Powerpoint. Those things should be banned.
b) Write horribly looking things in Word. Haven't ever heard of styles (when I tell them, some of them like the idea, but nobody actualy adopts it); all formatting is done with tab, spacebar and enter. Something between Wordpad and Abiword, in functionality, would be enough for them.
c) Use Excel as a...weird kind of simple database. I believe it doesn't really matter which kind of modern spreadsheet software is used for that...
PS. Perhaps we should really look at the limited/boneheaded ways in which MS Office is really used in the wild; and build the alternative on conclusions.
Social realities (you really don't want me to get into factors that shape them...) at work, I guess. Few I could think of immediatelly:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Sovieticus (don't limit this effect to failings of soviet block though - I'd say it's also cultivated by, still vast here, infuence of religious authorities...)
- Poland has a background of unqestioned fascination with everything exotic (and at the same time trying to ignore good local stuff) spanning several centuries (noble caste from XVI to XVIII century was shaped by a bit comical combination of west and far (for that time) east influences; which might also relate to how first RP ended in XIX century - contrary to what most people would like to believe, it were internal factors), and it didn't go away at all.
- about education system that you mention...vast majority of people simply care about getting a degree, others are almost shunned at. Nothing unique, but, what's worse, the system isn't geared at all towards individual path of education / creativity / choosing courses / etc.
- Nepotism, close relative to corruption, is all spanning.
- the formal side of running a company is anti-geared towards some small ambitiuos startups (luckily EU influence & direct support initiatives are changing that)
- something which wraps all of the above - people who don't fit prefer to simply leave; it's not really a matter of lack of jobs in IT sector here, more a matter of not seeing interesting perspectives (not limited only to jobs). And it's not a new thing either - throughout most of XIX and XX century undesirables were quite "compelled" to live abroad, in some periods outright killed.
PS. About my nickname - it's actually a name of pet rabbit belonging to my female friend of distant past; when I was finally making an account after few years of lurking, everything else that has a meaning, to me, and it's more sensible, was already taken;P Hm, I think I didn't even realise about "Snoopy" thing...
No, I'm beeing serious here - it's quite typical for PL computer, internet or, in this case, "social technical experiment/fun" areas to not even try coming up with anything new, just copying (usually poorly).
What's worse, such things grab a hold on local market far too often, through some kind of ill conceived patriotism, and create a bit of a tech ghetto here.
Though I wonder...is it that far fetched that it was planned? People write articles about them,/. has a story - and nowhere the product is critised, only the campaign.
Yeah, Opera is especially slow because of having Adblock and noscript built in, and also because of that pesky multithreaded architecture which makes GUI usable when you open dozen tabs in the background, and ALSO because of beeing able to handle very large number of tabs.
If you want security you use truecrypt. For free. "Secure" usb flashdrives are a scam (sometimes literally, with actually poor security)
OTOH performance might be often desirable, but imho it becomes less of a problem with increasing sizes - you simply keep everything you would likely need on a flashdrive all the time, with automatic synchronisation/version control.
Also, EU isn't that bad in sensibly using money. And AMD will benefit because another such behaviour from intel won't be looked at lightly (they will be under watchfull eye for several years, and if it happens again...bam! Another fine. If that won't change them...another one!) This means those illegal practices cease to be sustainable for them; otoh prices of CPUs need to be healthy / sustainable now, so there's no way intel can wage price war to the bottom - AMD benefits again.
(oh, and the fine must be put immediatelly into bank account...where it will sit until appeals end)
PS. Those fines are pocket change to EU (or even to most member states), it won't do anything for its budget. Also, EU usualy fines...european companies (you just don't hear about it on slashdot)
Slashdot Mirror
Well...not quite. Granted, OpenGL was awfull for a year or so. But afterwards and for the time when their GFX cards were "current", releases were, IMHO, perfectly timed - not too often for them to be a hassle, often enough so there were absolutelly no problems (I miss that on Nv or ATI...).
When G-series chips were relegated mostly to 2D stuff...they still got updates (once a year on average). My G400, 10 years old card, has drivers for 64bit Vista...can you say the same about TNT2?
As for Marvel G400 ("G400's TV card") - this was due to driver model changes in newer Windows. Supposedly it was impossible to make the card fully working (some hacked up drivers showed up, but without support of hardware MJPEG chip)
Check their website. This G400 of yours has new drivers even for 64bit Vista. (though I suspect without 3D acceleration; mostly for their MMS stuff, which uses the same chips so they also make it available for "mainstream" cards of distant past)
TBH I'm not so sure in the case of GeForce1...yes, conceptually it was significant shift...for a PC, a prelude to later "explosion" of features in pc GPUs and their programmability.
But during its lifetime GF1 didn't really change much, in practice. By pairing GFX card from the "previous" generation with a powerfull CPU you could still play everything completelly comfortably.
OTOH consider how many things have become mostly software-based after quite some time of needing to be implemented in hardware.
Well, if you insist solely on physics - that big car of yours has much worse handling, lower probability of actually avoiding a collision, and much higher probability of rollover. Stats seem to confirm it - percentage of accidents with SUVs is much higher than their share of the market would suggest. Ditto for lethal ones (there goes you safety...)
You activelly, by your own choice, make the road more dangerous, overall.
PS. Immediatelly, from the top of my head, I can name two instances when I probably actively avoided an accident thanks to still having control, though close to the edge (one case of possible high speed spin on the highway (and who knows what afterwards) - need of rapid steering during high speed driving + rain; one which would end up probably on a tree/rolling down small hill - loosing grip on gravel (yeah...wtf?!) on a bend on top of a hill). You need agile car to be actively safe.
Ahhh, ok then, thanks for clarification.
What I wrote mostly stems from the mantra "if a device/component was way outside its operating conditions, it shouldn't be trusted before thourough check". OTOH it seems the "steel car" just got a visual check, without confirming geometry/etc. Could linkage areas (whatever their method is...) between individual components be potentially suspect in case of such a car, for example?
Diesels do not work properly in regimes of work in current hybrids. I'll quote buddy of mine:
My forecast is that, in 5 years or so, the difficulties of a diesel hybrid will have been resolved, so we'll be looking at ~3 l/100 km for a family-sized car. How? I don't know yet but I know of 2 companies working on it. Experimental pre-production series within about 18-24 months (prototypes already running). However, the solution is not easy because diesels do not lend themselves easily to it. I suspect the answer may be in variable capacity dual-fuel engines. ...
Something to do with the stress of frequent stop/start of a hot engine knocking hell out of the big ends. Don't know the details but I believe that, under some circumstances, you may get ignition before the piston reaches TDC. I surmise that it may be because there is a dose of unburnt fuel in a cylinder after a stop which is still atomised at a start a few seconds later. If it happened in an ignition fired engine, it would fire only when there is a spark, so it's harmless, but in a diesel there is less control.
Remember that inching in a hybrid may stop and start the engine every second or two.
Other solution, apart from what he mentions, are serial hybrids.
Furthermore, it is somewhat likely that, while the elements of steel car didn't crumple, they did develop some internal cracks/etc. under the stresses of collision.
In the next crush "steel car guy" might for a nasty surprise when they'll fail catastrophically...
Oh, great, so you're admitting you have a car you don't need at all, and might never actually need it ("when we have a couple of kids"?!...)
In some cases of stationary objects that you mention, hitting them would be likely YOUR FRAKKING FAULT, bigtime. Besides, they would probably remain stationary throughout the collision, so the trick of "letting the other car deal with my energy" (like you would have the right...) wouldn't work anyway.
In other cases - the vector / main mass of collision would be one the windshield (unless you're opting to drive something not only large, but ridiculously large)
It's mostly a matter of perception:
a) bigger cars aren't necessarily more safe for its occupants (mostly because SUVs are built with 20 year old tech; accidentally, making small cars safer involves much more than simply reselling old tech in new package)
b) it's quite easy to modify big & heavy cars in such a way that smaller cars aren't really at a big disadvantage (properly flexible, properly low bumpers on new big trucks for example - but of course, SUVs wouldn't be as "manly" anymore)
BTW, it many (most?) of european countries city limit is 50 km/h nowadays.
Something's up...at around the same time E-ELT (42m telescope) will be under construction.
In that case (super-tribes) I must agree...to large degree. You ignore many other manifestations of culture which were and are used as a differentiating factor.
And also that many of them, depending on the circumstances/times, weren't that important at all (for example, concept of nationalitities is a relatively new invention/reinvention in Europe)
PS. Can't help but wonder...it still works in behaviours on social networking sites. Generally, even among the "pokemon collectors", nobody has more than few hundred contacts, which could probably fit into the size of Homo sapiens extended standard ("non-super") tribe. Some even limit themselves only to well-known social circle. But to have several thousands followers...there must be some "cultural artifact" that bonds them together.
Orthodox definatelly do. Though Catholics is enough for me ;p (after all, my country is "officially" around 90% catholic...)
Can't help but wonder...why they were constantly replacing the cooking elements anyway? ;p
And as for ending conclusion...well, it depends. The beduins definatelly weren't stupid - as you said, it was a matter of customs, culinary preferences and taste.
The local sheik definatelly wasn't stupid either; actually, quite the contrary - he was using one of the traits of intelligence: extrapolating accumulated knowledge to new situation (sadly, it didn't work because of quite different modes of operation of cold things/"traditional arab air conditioning" (look it up) he was accustomed to and fridge; but that's besides the point, our intelligence does fail us sometimes, especially when we aren't aware of additional factors)
However, if the thing with hitchhikers was true in some cases (I have my doubts...) this would imply some of them were, in fact...stupid; failing to extrapolate. Camels can run quite fast too and it would be a bad idea to get off them then too. Heck, tripping over when you run on hard surface is generally to be avoided...
Chimpanzees have groups which can be seen as equivalent to tribes. Groups which wage low intensity war with each other.
Though according to their own beliefs it IS cannibalism. It's kinda funny how in denial they are when you argue it ;p
You would think then that Excel is at least accurate (links here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnumeric )? Or that it's possible to install some other software alongside OOo, to have Visio equivalents? ;p
Now, more seriously...
What you say is of course valid - some people absolutelly require certain funcionalities of MS Office (though I do wonder sometimes what they did before those features? ;) ).
But...this in NO WAY explains the dominant position of MS Office on the market. Heck, even OpenOffice is total overkill - vast majority of people I know have (pirated) MS Office installed only so they can:
a) Create horrible presentations with Powerpoint. Those things should be banned.
b) Write horribly looking things in Word. Haven't ever heard of styles (when I tell them, some of them like the idea, but nobody actualy adopts it); all formatting is done with tab, spacebar and enter. Something between Wordpad and Abiword, in functionality, would be enough for them.
c) Use Excel as a...weird kind of simple database. I believe it doesn't really matter which kind of modern spreadsheet software is used for that...
PS. Perhaps we should really look at the limited/boneheaded ways in which MS Office is really used in the wild; and build the alternative on conclusions.
Social realities (you really don't want me to get into factors that shape them...) at work, I guess. Few I could think of immediatelly:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Sovieticus (don't limit this effect to failings of soviet block though - I'd say it's also cultivated by, still vast here, infuence of religious authorities...)
- Poland has a background of unqestioned fascination with everything exotic (and at the same time trying to ignore good local stuff) spanning several centuries (noble caste from XVI to XVIII century was shaped by a bit comical combination of west and far (for that time) east influences; which might also relate to how first RP ended in XIX century - contrary to what most people would like to believe, it were internal factors), and it didn't go away at all.
- about education system that you mention...vast majority of people simply care about getting a degree, others are almost shunned at. Nothing unique, but, what's worse, the system isn't geared at all towards individual path of education / creativity / choosing courses / etc.
- Nepotism, close relative to corruption, is all spanning.
- the formal side of running a company is anti-geared towards some small ambitiuos startups (luckily EU influence & direct support initiatives are changing that)
- something which wraps all of the above - people who don't fit prefer to simply leave; it's not really a matter of lack of jobs in IT sector here, more a matter of not seeing interesting perspectives (not limited only to jobs). And it's not a new thing either - throughout most of XIX and XX century undesirables were quite "compelled" to live abroad, in some periods outright killed.
PS. About my nickname - it's actually a name of pet rabbit belonging to my female friend of distant past; when I was finally making an account after few years of lurking, everything else that has a meaning, to me, and it's more sensible, was already taken ;P Hm, I think I didn't even realise about "Snoopy" thing...
Obviously.
No, I'm beeing serious here - it's quite typical for PL computer, internet or, in this case, "social technical experiment/fun" areas to not even try coming up with anything new, just copying (usually poorly).
What's worse, such things grab a hold on local market far too often, through some kind of ill conceived patriotism, and create a bit of a tech ghetto here.
Though I wonder...is it that far fetched that it was planned? People write articles about them, /. has a story - and nowhere the product is critised, only the campaign.
Yeah, Opera is especially slow because of having Adblock and noscript built in, and also because of that pesky multithreaded architecture which makes GUI usable when you open dozen tabs in the background, and ALSO because of beeing able to handle very large number of tabs.
Oh, wait...
If you want security you use truecrypt. For free. "Secure" usb flashdrives are a scam (sometimes literally, with actually poor security)
OTOH performance might be often desirable, but imho it becomes less of a problem with increasing sizes - you simply keep everything you would likely need on a flashdrive all the time, with automatic synchronisation/version control.
...thinking about this a bit more seriously, it might actually, and...more appropriately (? ;p ), give us THE QUESTION! :>
(taking into account how especially, among others, in astronomy/astrophysics new observations and answers often lead to more profound dillemas)
intel was harming the market. Market gets even.
Also, EU isn't that bad in sensibly using money. And AMD will benefit because another such behaviour from intel won't be looked at lightly (they will be under watchfull eye for several years, and if it happens again...bam! Another fine. If that won't change them...another one!) This means those illegal practices cease to be sustainable for them; otoh prices of CPUs need to be healthy / sustainable now, so there's no way intel can wage price war to the bottom - AMD benefits again.
(oh, and the fine must be put immediatelly into bank account...where it will sit until appeals end)
PS. Those fines are pocket change to EU (or even to most member states), it won't do anything for its budget. Also, EU usualy fines...european companies (you just don't hear about it on slashdot)