The other replier thinks that corporations wouldn't be so evil because they're run by human people who most likely will share the same humanizing characteristics of those around you.
I would agree but I think it's a pretty poor arguement.
I would venture that while humans can operate compassionately, corporate entities are not compassionate or human. The goal of the corporation is to maximize shareholder value.
This would also implicate that if the marginal profit of doing good outweighs the marginal profit of doing evil, the corporation would choose to do good! Corporations aren't good or evil, they're morally ambiguous. Morals don't factor into a corporations in either direction.
So I wouldn't posit that corporations are good per se, but they're far from the malicious entities you're describing through full-fledged FUD.
If you had an AIDS cure, you might undercut the temporary cures that you have, but you also kill off all the revenue the competing companies are making on those temporary cures. However, you are now the only go-to person for the AIDS cure and can reap a fortune since you are now a legitimate monopoly since you developed it. You can now maximize profits by charging at the point where marginal cost = marginal revenue, while killing the income flow of competitors. Plus you get brand recognition of being a pioneer in the pharmaceutical industry. You can reinvest that extra edge of profits into researching new drugs to release before other companies to further that edge.
There some reason why we would have to kill him? Or is the "kill" part just for exaggeration?
No need to kill him. But I'd still redistribute some of his wealth while being sure to leave him very very rich.
I can get behind the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few. Emphasis on the word "need". Even moreso, I wouldn't have any qualms about valuing the needs of the many against the luxuries of the few.
If I happen to be on the receiving end, of course I'd be pissed. But that doesn't mean that my desires somehow outweigh everyone else's.
I played City of Heroes for quite a while and found some surprises in my guild after going over the roster. Me and a friend were the youngest members at age 20, and about 1/3rd of the roster was female.
Pretty damned odd. I'm pretty sure that this situation was the exception rather than the rule.
I tried the lucid dream training method of writing down dreams, it's fun. Mostly it just allowed me to have dreams every night, vivid and fun, better than TV. It used up too much morning time and I've stopped, and I don't dream nearly as much anymore.
However, about 5 times I got lucid dreams. Naturally I became the sexual champion of a deserted island full of very trusting women. It was awesome. I took a second to put together all the best physical traits of women I know into one super woman.
It bothers me that Creative is going pretty much uncontested in the market for gaming audio cards. There isn't as much incentive for them to spend money on R&D to improve audio quality since they're the only ones focused on gaming audio in particular. They're the only ones to buy from. Also they have less incentive to give quality product support for previous generations of their cards, there's no competitor to compare stability with except the newest iteration of Creative cards.
I think we'll only see incremential steps of improvement in the sound environment of our games. After EAX came out(and Aureal died), everything following was just small improvements on the same thing. I've seen all the hype about the X-fi, it's still just a small improvement (though they did upgrade the outputs to the quality of some of the non-gaming computer audio cards).
I couldn't enjoy Sims 2 at all, then I tried the university expansion and I got hooked. I found out what made the difference. The busywork of need-attention pissed me off to no end. I don't CARE about having my sims fill needs. In Sims university, my characters had meals prepared for them, and "work" only takes like 3 hours of their day. Their houses are already equipped with all the necessities. Plus plenty of NPC dormmates that will automatically fill their own needs, while still being in the house for your sims to socialize with, and you can take control of them later if you like by having them move in.
The thing is that you build your way up to that point in Sims 2, whereas in college, you're kickstarted to that point. In the regular game you need to work up to making enough income to buy good enough items to quickly satisfy needs. The difference between the starter bed and the best bed can shave 3-4 hours off each day for a sim. I don't have the patience for that sort of grind, so I just use the money cheat so I can enjoy the rest of the game.
This is the truth that many folks need to swallow. The "hardcore" gamers slamming on all the upcoming games for being terrible and unoriginal ought to realize that their opinion is the minority.
Fact is, a good game is a good game regardless of whether or not it was innovative. If the majority of players enjoy it, the game did its job of giving them entertainment at the cost of their money. When people make innovation a core requirement of enjoyment then the developers will take the risks involved in doing so.
Growth in the gaming market just indicates that people are still having fun and finding the current batch of games to be worth their money.
I played system shock 2 only last year. It is a very old game by today's standards. I played Deus Ex when it was new. Deus Ex inherited a large amount of it's gameplay from System Shock, essentially evolving from it and adding to it. Now when I played System Shock, I'd already seen all the innovative elements, nothing new here to surprise me. But I didn't care! System Shock 2 was terrific even when it wasn't innovative to me, and with ancient graphics! Its because it's a good game, innovation isn't a prerequisite for entertainment for everyone.
But wait hear me out, I said/addition/. Until we manage to archive all these books and come up with a suitable replacement to paper for long-term reading sessions we need to keep the books.
These people are not really adding a library, but converting one into a study building and moving the books elsewhere. Come finals, it's not as easy as you'd think to find places to study the way you'd like. I need a table enough for me and perhaps 3 other study partners, and freedom to audibly discuss/teach each other the material. You can't do this in the dorms, you have other roommates who're either sleeping or blasting music, or studying with their groups on the only living room tables
This sets us out on a trek to discover a place to study, and the library is crammed pretty much at all times during exam weeks. Computer labs around here have all the computers in small cubicles or lined up on tables, so you can't talk all in a row.
We end up spilling over into coffeeshops for peaceful efficient study.
You'd think it'd be easy to find a place for 4 people to sit together at a table and study. But it isn't the case at our college.
Athletes will probably enjoy anti-chafe undies as well. At the moment the best alternative is the UnderArmor brand's line of underwear. The difference in comfort is considerable. After 2 or so hours of running I'd normally come back with painful rashes, 3 hours and they may even bleed slightly. The sleek underarmor fabric keeps things sliding painlessly and kept this from happening, as opposed to normal cotton boxers.
The problem is the $20 dollar pricetag per pair! Even if it isn't really better than the UnderArmor, at least it'd provide some competition to drive the prices down a bit for performance underwear.
Did they just pull people aside and ask them, "What's your favorite way of pirating our stuff?".
I can't really think of any valid way they can assert the numbers here. Frankly I'm guessing they're just wildly pulling numbers out of the air trying to find one that's plausible before stating it as a "study".
Really, I'm guessing most of the piraters are too lazy to carry the stuff over to their friends.
Heh, it's trash on the PC too y'know. I hate to admit it, but microsoft actually has the better software for keyboards/mice. Though Logitech's hardware side is nice, the software is utter crap.
They were ahead on utility and simplicity. Logitech packs in bloatware ads and looks like a cheap flash pop-up, and lacked program-specific buttons all the way up to the mx510, I can't say whether or not they've finally included this in the more recent products. Still, program-specific buttons were available on the first generation optical mice, and should have been basic to all mice thereafter.
Now, you get the program-specific button configs that logitech should have given us in the first place on the mx500/mx510s, I think the mx518s finally have it though.
Set it to activate a browser button configuration when you're in that program. Now, set button4 to the Shift key. Set button 5 to the close button.
Now when holding button4, you can use the scroll wheel to navigate back and forth. Hold button4 and left-click to open a page in a new window. Use button 5 to close windows. Far more streamlined than closing windows manually. It's a great help when going through a ton of windows.
If you use tabbed browsing, find the keyboard shortcut for closing a tab and bind a button to that instead of the close window function:P
I had gotten the playstation when it first came out, and shortly stopped buying anything console-oriented.
I got FFX in the mail yesterday, and my ps2 will arrive on monday.
Why am I now buying a ps2 right when ps3 is coming any day now? It's because the ps2 cost me 65 dollars, and FFX cost 12.50. I've got 5 more award-winning games coming in each at less than 15 bucks.
The PS2's graphics aren't unplayable compared to the brand-new games I'm playing on PC. It's in my tolerance level for graphics so long as the gameplay is good. I think I'm going to stick to a strategy of only buying the console of yesteryear so I pay a fraction of the cost. The games are still new to me even if people had already beaten them 4 years ago. I also get the clarity of hindsight to see which games actually turned out to be great rather than hyped trash.
You lose out on multiplayer experiences since there'll be fewer people online. But for those that primarily play console games alone, think about pausing the purchasing for a few years and then playing the same games you would've played, but for a much lower cost.
I'm seeing so much buzz and a churning rumor mill on the new consoles. By the time I make the next buy, I'll be certain I picked the winning platform(s). Heh, my friend remembers buying the Neo-Geo at $300...poor guy.
My brain probably farted, but I think it was spelled iD originally? I could be wrong.
Meh, anyway, I'm sure no slashdotter in the games section, reading an article about game consoles, referring to game companies will consider ID to refer to God. (If someone wanted to refer to GOD games, they'd just use those 3 letters:P)
Actually, I'd move to Vista just for interface prettiness alone. Stardock gives all kinds of interface prettiness, but costs too much. If Vista is making it easier to install new interface upgrades in this graphics change, then there will probably be free programs to give me those upgrades and I won't have to pay for Stardock.
Or are there already Stardock-like programs for free on Windows?
But I'm not going to trade away functionality that I already have. Does that monitor DRM thing just flat-out ban anything using a "suspicious" codec, or is it just preventing people from ripping material? I don't rip anything so I don't mind, I just want to play it. (Obligatory and probably false disclaimer: I don't download pirated material, I have legally purchased versions of it all, granting me the right to use it.)
Similarly, though Linux sounds great, I can't trade away the mass-compatibility offered by MS's monopoly. When developers choose to release their products and patches with full Linux compatibility, I'll gladly dump Windows and never look back.
Basically, even if Vista is just a prettier version of XP I would switch just because I don't want to buy stardock. (More disclaimer: Though I'm too cheap to buy Stardock, of course I wouldn't mind legally purchasing my version of Vista. Just like everyone else here, all my friends are using illegal copies of windows, but of course/MINE/ is perfectly legitimate.)
Indeed, I do come here for the jokes first, news second. There's plenty of places to get news, but Slashdot sillyness has a special place in my bookmarks.
IANA, I Am Not Anything. I'm seeing a lot of negative responses to this. I'm a bit of an idiot and I'm guessing there may even be more than one idiot reading slashdot as well. Could somebody explain to me why this is so bad?
Is it that BIOS is better, or EFI has no improvements to offer? Or is it that you want Open-source firmware instead and are afraid these companies will actively try to make open-source firmware impossible?
My first take was that a group of companies, even competitors, are joining together to try to make a standard for computers. I've always hated when I get screwed because two products from different companies refuse to work together. My thought was that standards would help establish a baseline so that companies know how to make their products work with noncompeting products.
Are slashdotters afraid of possible attempts to throttle a user's flexibility hidden in EFI? Is this fear of DRM based on something mentioned on the sites, or a potentiality?
First the people will have to feel that humans have intrinsic value in and of themselves.
The result of their existance is all that matters when a human becomes not much more than a statistic. The result of this man's e-mailing someone is a small amount of inconvenience, and a small amount of money in humanity having to develop anti-spam techniques to battle him. Then multiply this small problem to the scale he employs his spam and you have a massive problem. A recent post on slashdot entailed justification for the death sentence for malicious virus writers. His inconvenience and cost to humanity would outstrip a murderer's pretty quickly when the value of a human life is unaccounted for.
Which isn't to say that I think human life is worthless. If I had to be judged on a similar standard, I wouldn't be worth much at all. I'd just say that it's a bummer to kill someone, but at the same time I recognize that people will feel the benefit of his death far more than the benefit of his life.
IANA (I am not anything), and I'm not asking this to be a smart-ass. Just want to be clear since the internet can obscure meaning in text. I'm actually curious and this is kind of a basic question the rest of us "not anythings" will want to know.
What are the advantages of putting a human outside the ship rather than a robot with various tools and sensors/cameras?
It seems like this problem of keeping the human alive and capable outside the ship is difficult. How much would we stand to lose by using a robot ball? Some people here are wondering about just shutting off the hand entirely, and just attaching mechanical arms onto the end of the hand encapsulement. Perhaps they could just eschew the human part entirely and just go with arms.
Humans have smell, touch, taste, and sound either cut off or eliminated outside that ship. The body's design isn't really custommade for space, so it'll naturally be inefficient. The hand is an amazing tool, but there's all this trouble keeping it working the same way in space. Perhaps they should just learn from the hand's design and put out a much-simplified adaptation of it onto the robot.
The other big bonus of having a human in space seems to be awareness. The head and eyes are quick and easy to use. But can't you just pivot cameras around, and even zoom them in more effectively than human eyes?
Legs probably don't help that much in space, that's why I'm assuming a ball with jets on it would be how somebody'd cobble together a robot.
I'm guessing it's primarily cost restriction on putting out such a robot into space rather than encasing a human and putting him out right? All that technology rolled into single unit ball for space is going to be difficult to fund.
Slashdot Mirror
Scientists create colored bubbles...
Jesse Jackson proclaims them "Bubbles of color"
Yuna cleavage came out during the wedding scene.
The other replier thinks that corporations wouldn't be so evil because they're run by human people who most likely will share the same humanizing characteristics of those around you.
I would agree but I think it's a pretty poor arguement.
I would venture that while humans can operate compassionately, corporate entities are not compassionate or human. The goal of the corporation is to maximize shareholder value.
This would also implicate that if the marginal profit of doing good outweighs the marginal profit of doing evil, the corporation would choose to do good! Corporations aren't good or evil, they're morally ambiguous. Morals don't factor into a corporations in either direction.
So I wouldn't posit that corporations are good per se, but they're far from the malicious entities you're describing through full-fledged FUD.
If you had an AIDS cure, you might undercut the temporary cures that you have, but you also kill off all the revenue the competing companies are making on those temporary cures. However, you are now the only go-to person for the AIDS cure and can reap a fortune since you are now a legitimate monopoly since you developed it. You can now maximize profits by charging at the point where marginal cost = marginal revenue, while killing the income flow of competitors. Plus you get brand recognition of being a pioneer in the pharmaceutical industry. You can reinvest that extra edge of profits into researching new drugs to release before other companies to further that edge.
There some reason why we would have to kill him? Or is the "kill" part just for exaggeration?
No need to kill him. But I'd still redistribute some of his wealth while being sure to leave him very very rich.
I can get behind the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few. Emphasis on the word "need". Even moreso, I wouldn't have any qualms about valuing the needs of the many against the luxuries of the few.
If I happen to be on the receiving end, of course I'd be pissed. But that doesn't mean that my desires somehow outweigh everyone else's.
I played City of Heroes for quite a while and found some surprises in my guild after going over the roster. Me and a friend were the youngest members at age 20, and about 1/3rd of the roster was female.
Pretty damned odd. I'm pretty sure that this situation was the exception rather than the rule.
I tried the lucid dream training method of writing down dreams, it's fun. Mostly it just allowed me to have dreams every night, vivid and fun, better than TV. It used up too much morning time and I've stopped, and I don't dream nearly as much anymore.
However, about 5 times I got lucid dreams. Naturally I became the sexual champion of a deserted island full of very trusting women. It was awesome. I took a second to put together all the best physical traits of women I know into one super woman.
It bothers me that Creative is going pretty much uncontested in the market for gaming audio cards. There isn't as much incentive for them to spend money on R&D to improve audio quality since they're the only ones focused on gaming audio in particular. They're the only ones to buy from. Also they have less incentive to give quality product support for previous generations of their cards, there's no competitor to compare stability with except the newest iteration of Creative cards.
I think we'll only see incremential steps of improvement in the sound environment of our games. After EAX came out(and Aureal died), everything following was just small improvements on the same thing. I've seen all the hype about the X-fi, it's still just a small improvement (though they did upgrade the outputs to the quality of some of the non-gaming computer audio cards).
I couldn't enjoy Sims 2 at all, then I tried the university expansion and I got hooked. I found out what made the difference. The busywork of need-attention pissed me off to no end. I don't CARE about having my sims fill needs. In Sims university, my characters had meals prepared for them, and "work" only takes like 3 hours of their day. Their houses are already equipped with all the necessities. Plus plenty of NPC dormmates that will automatically fill their own needs, while still being in the house for your sims to socialize with, and you can take control of them later if you like by having them move in.
The thing is that you build your way up to that point in Sims 2, whereas in college, you're kickstarted to that point. In the regular game you need to work up to making enough income to buy good enough items to quickly satisfy needs. The difference between the starter bed and the best bed can shave 3-4 hours off each day for a sim. I don't have the patience for that sort of grind, so I just use the money cheat so I can enjoy the rest of the game.
This is the truth that many folks need to swallow. The "hardcore" gamers slamming on all the upcoming games for being terrible and unoriginal ought to realize that their opinion is the minority.
Fact is, a good game is a good game regardless of whether or not it was innovative. If the majority of players enjoy it, the game did its job of giving them entertainment at the cost of their money. When people make innovation a core requirement of enjoyment then the developers will take the risks involved in doing so.
Growth in the gaming market just indicates that people are still having fun and finding the current batch of games to be worth their money.
I played system shock 2 only last year. It is a very old game by today's standards. I played Deus Ex when it was new. Deus Ex inherited a large amount of it's gameplay from System Shock, essentially evolving from it and adding to it. Now when I played System Shock, I'd already seen all the innovative elements, nothing new here to surprise me. But I didn't care! System Shock 2 was terrific even when it wasn't innovative to me, and with ancient graphics! Its because it's a good game, innovation isn't a prerequisite for entertainment for everyone.
Imagine if this turned out to be true and the public learned of it...
Would people stop using google?:)
But wait hear me out, I said /addition/. Until we manage to archive all these books and come up with a suitable replacement to paper for long-term reading sessions we need to keep the books.
These people are not really adding a library, but converting one into a study building and moving the books elsewhere. Come finals, it's not as easy as you'd think to find places to study the way you'd like. I need a table enough for me and perhaps 3 other study partners, and freedom to audibly discuss/teach each other the material. You can't do this in the dorms, you have other roommates who're either sleeping or blasting music, or studying with their groups on the only living room tables
This sets us out on a trek to discover a place to study, and the library is crammed pretty much at all times during exam weeks. Computer labs around here have all the computers in small cubicles or lined up on tables, so you can't talk all in a row.
We end up spilling over into coffeeshops for peaceful efficient study.
You'd think it'd be easy to find a place for 4 people to sit together at a table and study. But it isn't the case at our college.
The moral of the story is to squeeze yank and pull at any swollen growth in the pelvic area. It's for your own good.
Can't say as much for the kittens though.
Athletes will probably enjoy anti-chafe undies as well. At the moment the best alternative is the UnderArmor brand's line of underwear. The difference in comfort is considerable. After 2 or so hours of running I'd normally come back with painful rashes, 3 hours and they may even bleed slightly. The sleek underarmor fabric keeps things sliding painlessly and kept this from happening, as opposed to normal cotton boxers.
The problem is the $20 dollar pricetag per pair! Even if it isn't really better than the UnderArmor, at least it'd provide some competition to drive the prices down a bit for performance underwear.
Did they just pull people aside and ask them, "What's your favorite way of pirating our stuff?".
I can't really think of any valid way they can assert the numbers here. Frankly I'm guessing they're just wildly pulling numbers out of the air trying to find one that's plausible before stating it as a "study".
Really, I'm guessing most of the piraters are too lazy to carry the stuff over to their friends.
Heh, it's trash on the PC too y'know. I hate to admit it, but microsoft actually has the better software for keyboards/mice. Though Logitech's hardware side is nice, the software is utter crap.
They were ahead on utility and simplicity. Logitech packs in bloatware ads and looks like a cheap flash pop-up, and lacked program-specific buttons all the way up to the mx510, I can't say whether or not they've finally included this in the more recent products. Still, program-specific buttons were available on the first generation optical mice, and should have been basic to all mice thereafter.
I have a better solution, in my opinion at least.
Download LogiGamer, it's free.
Now, you get the program-specific button configs that logitech should have given us in the first place on the mx500/mx510s, I think the mx518s finally have it though.
Set it to activate a browser button configuration when you're in that program. Now, set button4 to the Shift key. Set button 5 to the close button.
Now when holding button4, you can use the scroll wheel to navigate back and forth. Hold button4 and left-click to open a page in a new window. Use button 5 to close windows. Far more streamlined than closing windows manually. It's a great help when going through a ton of windows.
If you use tabbed browsing, find the keyboard shortcut for closing a tab and bind a button to that instead of the close window function:P
If games taught me to do anything, it's to headshot terrorists.
I had gotten the playstation when it first came out, and shortly stopped buying anything console-oriented.
I got FFX in the mail yesterday, and my ps2 will arrive on monday.
Why am I now buying a ps2 right when ps3 is coming any day now? It's because the ps2 cost me 65 dollars, and FFX cost 12.50. I've got 5 more award-winning games coming in each at less than 15 bucks.
The PS2's graphics aren't unplayable compared to the brand-new games I'm playing on PC. It's in my tolerance level for graphics so long as the gameplay is good. I think I'm going to stick to a strategy of only buying the console of yesteryear so I pay a fraction of the cost. The games are still new to me even if people had already beaten them 4 years ago. I also get the clarity of hindsight to see which games actually turned out to be great rather than hyped trash.
You lose out on multiplayer experiences since there'll be fewer people online. But for those that primarily play console games alone, think about pausing the purchasing for a few years and then playing the same games you would've played, but for a much lower cost.
I'm seeing so much buzz and a churning rumor mill on the new consoles. By the time I make the next buy, I'll be certain I picked the winning platform(s). Heh, my friend remembers buying the Neo-Geo at $300...poor guy.
My brain probably farted, but I think it was spelled iD originally? I could be wrong.
Meh, anyway, I'm sure no slashdotter in the games section, reading an article about game consoles, referring to game companies will consider ID to refer to God. (If someone wanted to refer to GOD games, they'd just use those 3 letters:P)
Actually, I'd move to Vista just for interface prettiness alone. Stardock gives all kinds of interface prettiness, but costs too much. If Vista is making it easier to install new interface upgrades in this graphics change, then there will probably be free programs to give me those upgrades and I won't have to pay for Stardock.
/MINE/ is perfectly legitimate.)
Or are there already Stardock-like programs for free on Windows?
But I'm not going to trade away functionality that I already have. Does that monitor DRM thing just flat-out ban anything using a "suspicious" codec, or is it just preventing people from ripping material? I don't rip anything so I don't mind, I just want to play it. (Obligatory and probably false disclaimer: I don't download pirated material, I have legally purchased versions of it all, granting me the right to use it.)
Similarly, though Linux sounds great, I can't trade away the mass-compatibility offered by MS's monopoly. When developers choose to release their products and patches with full Linux compatibility, I'll gladly dump Windows and never look back.
Basically, even if Vista is just a prettier version of XP I would switch just because I don't want to buy stardock. (More disclaimer: Though I'm too cheap to buy Stardock, of course I wouldn't mind legally purchasing my version of Vista. Just like everyone else here, all my friends are using illegal copies of windows, but of course
Indeed, I do come here for the jokes first, news second. There's plenty of places to get news, but Slashdot sillyness has a special place in my bookmarks.
IANA, I Am Not Anything. I'm seeing a lot of negative responses to this. I'm a bit of an idiot and I'm guessing there may even be more than one idiot reading slashdot as well. Could somebody explain to me why this is so bad?
Is it that BIOS is better, or EFI has no improvements to offer? Or is it that you want Open-source firmware instead and are afraid these companies will actively try to make open-source firmware impossible?
My first take was that a group of companies, even competitors, are joining together to try to make a standard for computers. I've always hated when I get screwed because two products from different companies refuse to work together. My thought was that standards would help establish a baseline so that companies know how to make their products work with noncompeting products.
Are slashdotters afraid of possible attempts to throttle a user's flexibility hidden in EFI? Is this fear of DRM based on something mentioned on the sites, or a potentiality?
Oh dear God I can't stop laughing!!! I'm at work! Gotta keep a poker face...
First the people will have to feel that humans have intrinsic value in and of themselves.
The result of their existance is all that matters when a human becomes not much more than a statistic. The result of this man's e-mailing someone is a small amount of inconvenience, and a small amount of money in humanity having to develop anti-spam techniques to battle him. Then multiply this small problem to the scale he employs his spam and you have a massive problem. A recent post on slashdot entailed justification for the death sentence for malicious virus writers. His inconvenience and cost to humanity would outstrip a murderer's pretty quickly when the value of a human life is unaccounted for.
Which isn't to say that I think human life is worthless. If I had to be judged on a similar standard, I wouldn't be worth much at all. I'd just say that it's a bummer to kill someone, but at the same time I recognize that people will feel the benefit of his death far more than the benefit of his life.
IANA (I am not anything), and I'm not asking this to be a smart-ass. Just want to be clear since the internet can obscure meaning in text. I'm actually curious and this is kind of a basic question the rest of us "not anythings" will want to know.
What are the advantages of putting a human outside the ship rather than a robot with various tools and sensors/cameras?
It seems like this problem of keeping the human alive and capable outside the ship is difficult. How much would we stand to lose by using a robot ball? Some people here are wondering about just shutting off the hand entirely, and just attaching mechanical arms onto the end of the hand encapsulement. Perhaps they could just eschew the human part entirely and just go with arms.
Humans have smell, touch, taste, and sound either cut off or eliminated outside that ship. The body's design isn't really custommade for space, so it'll naturally be inefficient. The hand is an amazing tool, but there's all this trouble keeping it working the same way in space. Perhaps they should just learn from the hand's design and put out a much-simplified adaptation of it onto the robot.
The other big bonus of having a human in space seems to be awareness. The head and eyes are quick and easy to use. But can't you just pivot cameras around, and even zoom them in more effectively than human eyes?
Legs probably don't help that much in space, that's why I'm assuming a ball with jets on it would be how somebody'd cobble together a robot.
I'm guessing it's primarily cost restriction on putting out such a robot into space rather than encasing a human and putting him out right? All that technology rolled into single unit ball for space is going to be difficult to fund.