Let it be noted that windows update uses ActiveX controls to do its job, so even if it passed the URL to your pefered browser, there would be very little chance said browser would be able to handle the content correctly.
I know you can add ActiveX support to firefox, but I do not know if you can do the same to Opera, and even then, it isn't default. While I hate to say it, Windows Update launching IE is actually a good thing in the way that you know what the browser can do, and you know it can do ActiveX, so you know it will work.
Actually the older lego mindstorms kit had an OCX for use with other languages. I remember programming a lightgate in VB once for my physics lab. It wasn't perfect (I had only one light sensor, so the calculations had to be done slightly diffrent, and due to a delay with the signal there was a huge error), but it did work as expected.
Of course. Images are (excuse the pun) only part of the full picture. Combined with sensor readings (that they should have up to a point), and other various information factors, they should be able to work out what happend with a decent degree of accuracy.
The images will generally show how it crashed, from which you can work out how it came to crash like that, which is generally the information you want.
Basically the probe was designed to impact on the surface, after being slowed by the parachutes. The underside of the probe was capable and designed to impact hard. However, what appears to have happend is that the impact was side on, hitting where the probe wasn't designed to be hit, and doing fatial damage.
>>Why? Is he going to run up and get it once he locates it?
Of course not, that would be stupid to say.
The whole point of looking at failure is to work out *why* it happend, and *how* you can prevent it. The probe was lost as it entered the atmosphere, and never managed to send out its signal to earth. Looking at images of how it failed will give clues to any future missions.
You also must remember that a high percentage of probes sent to Mars fail. There's obviously a need to work out how these things fail and work out ways to prevent it from happning again.
Insults? I'm not sure how you think that buying puts is an insult.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Put_option: A put option (sometimes simply called a "put") is a financial contract between two parties, the buyer and the seller of the option. The put allows the buyer the right but not the obligation to sell a commodity or financial instrument (the underlying instrument) to the seller of the option at a certain time for a certain price (the strike price). The seller has the obligation to purchase at that strike price, if the buyer does choose to exercise the option.
That would make the &'s appear, but slashdot is still stripping the slashes, question marks and decimal points from the WWURI's. I think the only way to get around that would be to fix the slash code:P
>The largest intact objects left on the moon after the landings were not the LRVs but the descent stages for the LMs
Good point, but if they were visible, you would see them by looking where the rovers are (since all rovers were parked a few hundred meteres from the descent stages).
I do find it intresting that the SIVB never left a large enough mark to make an impression on a 20m/pixel view, on the consideration that they weighed some 14,000 kg and (according to wikipedia) were 17.8m in length and a 6.6m diameter...
Small correction on myself. The offical design documentation lists the length of the rovers at 122 inches, which is 3 meters, so thats a 6th of a pixel at 20m/pixel; or still too small to see.
It might sound backwards, but WorldWind also uses.net stuff that Mono hasn't yet ported, so even if you tried to hack at WW to work with OpenGL, there'd still be outstanding items to fix in relation to the missing support from Mono.
>I guess this means we still won't be able to see the landing sites in enough detail?
Correct. The largest object that is on the moon is the 14036kg SIVB from Apollo 15. Located at 1.51S 17.48W (or as a WWURI: worldwind://goto/world=Moon&lat=-1.51&lon=-17.48&a lt=13402 ), it isn't actually visible, possibly because that is its impact place, rather than a resting place (so it could well be smashed).
The largest intact objects is the Lunar Rovers, and there's three of them ( Apollo 15's rover (worldwind://goto/world=Moon&lat=26.08&lon=3.66&al t=13402), Apollo 16's rover (worldwind://goto/world=Moon&lat=-8.97&lon=-15.51& alt=13402) and Apollo 17's rover (worldwind://goto/world=Moon&lat=20.17&lon=-30.77& alt=13402), however at about 2 meters in length, on a 20m/pixel basis they are a 10th of a pixel.
So in short, if you're looking for 'evidence', you'll be waiting for higher-res images:)
NeoThermic
P.S. Sorry for the non-clickable URL's, but slashdot strips out the usefull characters, so WWURI's end up as: worldwind:gotoworldMoonlat-151lon-1748alt13402, which is useless
Whoa funny. PC Zone, PC Gamer and PC Format alone hold about 98% of the UK PC mag market for games. They are not 'obscure' by a long shot.
As for 'general coverage', Darwinia has featured in Edge, a few UK newspapers, had a spot on TechTV (or whoever owns it now), and been part of keynote speaches by some very large figures in the gaming world.
The sad part is, most of the coverage has been UK based. Introversion haven't managed to convince anyone that it is worth publishing Darwinia in the US; IMO whoever's rejected it has made a bad choice. Real money can be made here, if you just open your eyes and look! (sorry, had to address them directly).
Ok, the first part is insightfull, but this part is utter crap:
>'It's interesting, but it hasn't had the press scores and coverage'
Really?
Read: http://www.darwinia.co.uk/exposure/index.html - PC Format: 90% - PC Gamer: 90% - PC Zone: 84% - IGN.com: 88% (8.8 out of 10) - Others, never dropping below 70% (7/10) Read: http://www.darwinia.co.uk/exposure/webreviews.html - All but three reviews scored the game at 80% or higher (some gave it 100%). - The scores that were not over 80% slated the game for bugs that are fixed in the 1.2 patch, so their scores are a bit outdated.
Next time you say the game hasn't had press scores, check your sources.
>My main machine is a mac. Apparently Ambrosia have a mac port, but the main darwinia page doesn't mention that anywhere.
What site did you look at?
From darwinia.co.uk's front page: Download Demo for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux
Oh, look! Mac!
>It looked like some random shareware game released in the late '90s, and not a particularly good one at that.
Not a good one? From about 20 or so reviews, the *average* score is a 8.5; the most popular score, however, seems to be somewhere around a 9.
As for the date... yeah. Go peak at the mod tags: Modified: 14 August 2005 21:57:36
and clicking news: 'Posted by Chris on Tue Sep 06, 2005 2:40 pm'
Sometimes the problem with the world is that people don't open their eyes and READ THE DAMN PAGE. It isn't too hard, and its free, so why not try it sometime?
As someone else who was fascinated by such things, I would say it was how they spread.
Like their biological counterparts, viruses and worms propergate by clueless uses, system holes, and the internet (if you need the human version: clueless people, holes, the outside world).
It fascinated me in the sense that just a few lines of code can cause such havok and can spread so fast with such little effort.
Now days while I like taking apart worms I've caught from the wild (by choice; I'm not open like a clueless user), I dispise those who make distructive ones or use them to host botnets, as thats akin to killing others before killing yourself. Killing youself isn't honourable anyway, but taking others with you is cowardly.
Wow. There's a bit wrong here that I think I need to step in and make a few points.
First, new power supplies in PC's are actually *very* efficent. Sure, you'll have to pay a bit extra (a QTec will *not* do), but for example a Tagan TG480-U01 has been measured to 99% efficency, while still being a 480W PSU. That's hard to beat!
Secondly, a PSU isn't the hottest compoment for *all* PC's. If you're [lucky|unlucky] enough to have a P4 with a prescott core, you'll be looking at a good 130W heat dissipation under full load. Even if you're lucky to have a northwood core, thats still 110W under load. You're talking more if you dare venture into dual core territory with Intel.
>Is an infinite number minus two still an infinite number?
Yes. Infinity minus or plus a finite number is still infinity. (Same with infinity divided by a finite number)
Infact, Infinity minus infinity, due to the nature of infinity, can be 0, infinity still, or minus infinity. It gets even weirder when infinity plus infinity is still infinity. Yeah, infinity is odd like that.
This is the same "problem" people had with XP, yet its fully optional. Go to View -> Skin Chooser, and select 'Classic'. Bang, skins disabled, its normal.
>Also, incredibly annoying auto-connection to the Internet in order to 'guess' what the titles of your CD, and the songs on it, are.
The feature isn't too horrible, as I've found it to be always correct and very usefull.
>but it still keeps the names it wrongly ascribed to tracks on CDs already played
As for speed, I suppose since I'm blessed with a 3GHz P4, I don't see any slowness, but I've found things like winamp to be far slower. I'm intrested if anyone can suggest any better players though, as WMP seems to have all that I want.
Ok, call me a devils advocate, but what issues do you have over WMP? I myself (and a few others I know) use it a lot, as it has some really decent features, which don't appear in, say, Winamp.
To be fully honest, if WMP wasn't bundled with Windows, but as a free download from MS, I would actually still take my time to find it rather than get Winamp or any other player.
Slashdot Mirror
Ctrl+E or Layer -> Merge Layers is so difficult these days...
NeoThermic
Let it be noted that windows update uses ActiveX controls to do its job, so even if it passed the URL to your pefered browser, there would be very little chance said browser would be able to handle the content correctly.
I know you can add ActiveX support to firefox, but I do not know if you can do the same to Opera, and even then, it isn't default. While I hate to say it, Windows Update launching IE is actually a good thing in the way that you know what the browser can do, and you know it can do ActiveX, so you know it will work.
NeoThermic
Actually the older lego mindstorms kit had an OCX for use with other languages. I remember programming a lightgate in VB once for my physics lab. It wasn't perfect (I had only one light sensor, so the calculations had to be done slightly diffrent, and due to a delay with the signal there was a huge error), but it did work as expected.
l egomindstorms.com
Have a peak here for more info:
http://mindstorms.lego.com/sdk2/?domainredir=www.
NeoThermic
Of course. Images are (excuse the pun) only part of the full picture. Combined with sensor readings (that they should have up to a point), and other various information factors, they should be able to work out what happend with a decent degree of accuracy.
The images will generally show how it crashed, from which you can work out how it came to crash like that, which is generally the information you want.
NeoThermic
The quote there is a bit short on words.
Basically the probe was designed to impact on the surface, after being slowed by the parachutes. The underside of the probe was capable and designed to impact hard. However, what appears to have happend is that the impact was side on, hitting where the probe wasn't designed to be hit, and doing fatial damage.
NeoThermic
>>Why? Is he going to run up and get it once he locates it?
Of course not, that would be stupid to say.
The whole point of looking at failure is to work out *why* it happend, and *how* you can prevent it. The probe was lost as it entered the atmosphere, and never managed to send out its signal to earth. Looking at images of how it failed will give clues to any future missions.
You also must remember that a high percentage of probes sent to Mars fail. There's obviously a need to work out how these things fail and work out ways to prevent it from happning again.
NeoThermic
Insults? I'm not sure how you think that buying puts is an insult.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Put_option:
A put option (sometimes simply called a "put") is a financial contract between two parties, the buyer and the seller of the option. The put allows the buyer the right but not the obligation to sell a commodity or financial instrument (the underlying instrument) to the seller of the option at a certain time for a certain price (the strike price). The seller has the obligation to purchase at that strike price, if the buyer does choose to exercise the option.
NeoThermic
...
The UK uses miles for measuring road distance.
NeoThermic
I get Sepulveda Boulevard because it sounds evil!
NeoThermic
As suggested over at Intuitor, why not send up a team of bowling experts to create a hole to the center, and then detonate a few nukes?
Simple...
NeoThermic
That would make the &'s appear, but slashdot is still stripping the slashes, question marks and decimal points from the WWURI's. I think the only way to get around that would be to fix the slash code :P
NeoThermic
>The largest intact objects left on the moon after the landings were not the LRVs but the descent stages for the LMs
Good point, but if they were visible, you would see them by looking where the rovers are (since all rovers were parked a few hundred meteres from the descent stages).
I do find it intresting that the SIVB never left a large enough mark to make an impression on a 20m/pixel view, on the consideration that they weighed some 14,000 kg and (according to wikipedia) were 17.8m in length and a 6.6m diameter...
NeoThermic
Small correction on myself. The offical design documentation lists the length of the rovers at 122 inches, which is 3 meters, so thats a 6th of a pixel at 20m/pixel; or still too small to see.
NeoThermic
It might sound backwards, but WorldWind also uses .net stuff that Mono hasn't yet ported, so even if you tried to hack at WW to work with OpenGL, there'd still be outstanding items to fix in relation to the missing support from Mono.
NeoThermic
Correct. The largest object that is on the moon is the 14036kg SIVB from Apollo 15. Located at 1.51S 17.48W (or as a WWURI: worldwind://goto/world=Moon&lat=-1.51&lon=-17.48&a lt=13402 ), it isn't actually visible, possibly because that is its impact place, rather than a resting place (so it could well be smashed).
The largest intact objects is the Lunar Rovers, and there's three of them ( Apollo 15's rover (worldwind://goto/world=Moon&lat=26.08&lon=3.66&al t=13402), Apollo 16's rover (worldwind://goto/world=Moon&lat=-8.97&lon=-15.51& alt=13402) and Apollo 17's rover (worldwind://goto/world=Moon&lat=20.17&lon=-30.77& alt=13402), however at about 2 meters in length, on a 20m/pixel basis they are a 10th of a pixel.
So in short, if you're looking for 'evidence', you'll be waiting for higher-res images :)
NeoThermic
P.S. Sorry for the non-clickable URL's, but slashdot strips out the usefull characters, so WWURI's end up as: worldwind:gotoworldMoonlat-151lon-1748alt13402, which is useless
>obscure PC gamer magazines
Whoa funny. PC Zone, PC Gamer and PC Format alone hold about 98% of the UK PC mag market for games. They are not 'obscure' by a long shot.
As for 'general coverage', Darwinia has featured in Edge, a few UK newspapers, had a spot on TechTV (or whoever owns it now), and been part of keynote speaches by some very large figures in the gaming world.
The sad part is, most of the coverage has been UK based. Introversion haven't managed to convince anyone that it is worth publishing Darwinia in the US; IMO whoever's rejected it has made a bad choice. Real money can be made here, if you just open your eyes and look! (sorry, had to address them directly).
NeoThermic
Hmm. Great idea. Lets do that.. Oh, wait, we have:
http://store.introversion.co.uk/
NeoThermic
Sorry, who the hell modded this informative?
l
Ok, the first part is insightfull, but this part is utter crap:
>'It's interesting, but it hasn't had the press scores and coverage'
Really?
Read:
http://www.darwinia.co.uk/exposure/index.html
- PC Format: 90%
- PC Gamer: 90%
- PC Zone: 84%
- IGN.com: 88% (8.8 out of 10)
- Others, never dropping below 70% (7/10)
Read:
http://www.darwinia.co.uk/exposure/webreviews.htm
- All but three reviews scored the game at 80% or higher (some gave it 100%).
- The scores that were not over 80% slated the game for bugs that are fixed in the 1.2 patch, so their scores are a bit outdated.
Next time you say the game hasn't had press scores, check your sources.
NeoThermic
>My main machine is a mac. Apparently Ambrosia have a mac port, but the main darwinia page doesn't mention that anywhere.
What site did you look at?
From darwinia.co.uk's front page:
Download Demo
for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux
Oh, look! Mac!
>It looked like some random shareware game released in the late '90s, and not a particularly good one at that.
Not a good one? From about 20 or so reviews, the *average* score is a 8.5; the most popular score, however, seems to be somewhere around a 9.
As for the date... yeah. Go peak at the mod tags:
Modified: 14 August 2005 21:57:36
and clicking news:
'Posted by Chris on Tue Sep 06, 2005 2:40 pm'
Sometimes the problem with the world is that people don't open their eyes and READ THE DAMN PAGE. It isn't too hard, and its free, so why not try it sometime?
NeoThermic
Either its a sarcastic stabb at linux, or an attempt at a joke, but either way I'll throw in my two pence.
:)
There are plenty of games avalable for Linux, including great titles such as Uplink (http://www.uplink.co.uk/), Darwinia (http://www.darwinia.co.uk/), and a many others.
You just need to look about more often
NeoThermic
As someone else who was fascinated by such things, I would say it was how they spread.
Like their biological counterparts, viruses and worms propergate by clueless uses, system holes, and the internet (if you need the human version: clueless people, holes, the outside world).
It fascinated me in the sense that just a few lines of code can cause such havok and can spread so fast with such little effort.
Now days while I like taking apart worms I've caught from the wild (by choice; I'm not open like a clueless user), I dispise those who make distructive ones or use them to host botnets, as thats akin to killing others before killing yourself. Killing youself isn't honourable anyway, but taking others with you is cowardly.
YMMV though.
NeoThermic
Wow. There's a bit wrong here that I think I need to step in and make a few points.
First, new power supplies in PC's are actually *very* efficent. Sure, you'll have to pay a bit extra (a QTec will *not* do), but for example a Tagan TG480-U01 has been measured to 99% efficency, while still being a 480W PSU. That's hard to beat!
Secondly, a PSU isn't the hottest compoment for *all* PC's. If you're [lucky|unlucky] enough to have a P4 with a prescott core, you'll be looking at a good 130W heat dissipation under full load. Even if you're lucky to have a northwood core, thats still 110W under load. You're talking more if you dare venture into dual core territory with Intel.
NeoThermic
>Is an infinite number minus two still an infinite number?
Yes. Infinity minus or plus a finite number is still infinity. (Same with infinity divided by a finite number)
Infact, Infinity minus infinity, due to the nature of infinity, can be 0, infinity still, or minus infinity. It gets even weirder when infinity plus infinity is still infinity. Yeah, infinity is odd like that.
NeoThermic
>horriffic looking 'Fisher-Price' interface
This is the same "problem" people had with XP, yet its fully optional. Go to View -> Skin Chooser, and select 'Classic'. Bang, skins disabled, its normal.
>Also, incredibly annoying auto-connection to the Internet in order to 'guess' what the titles of your CD, and the songs on it, are.
The feature isn't too horrible, as I've found it to be always correct and very usefull.
>but it still keeps the names it wrongly ascribed to tracks on CDs already played
Tools -> Options, select 'Privacy'. Press the button labeled 'Clear Caches'
As for speed, I suppose since I'm blessed with a 3GHz P4, I don't see any slowness, but I've found things like winamp to be far slower. I'm intrested if anyone can suggest any better players though, as WMP seems to have all that I want.
NeoThermic
Ok, call me a devils advocate, but what issues do you have over WMP? I myself (and a few others I know) use it a lot, as it has some really decent features, which don't appear in, say, Winamp.
To be fully honest, if WMP wasn't bundled with Windows, but as a free download from MS, I would actually still take my time to find it rather than get Winamp or any other player.
NeoThermic