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"Speed- why do we need it?"

Speed. Whether you are speeding down the Motorway, or running around a track- we crave it. The same can be said about Internet connection speed. Will there ever be a time when we get comments like, "This connection is so slow, it almost took a nanosecond to download a movie." Scary, yet the time will come.

Something about the need gets us excited, well, unless you have motion sickness, in which case you will hate it, but it's normally down to adrenaline. It pumps through our blood at the mere mention of Speed, and we crave it. I always get butterfly's in my stomach when I am going on a fast rollercoaster, not because I'm scared, and it's not because I have motion sickness, but because I know that when the wind passes through my hair as I am nipping along a track, I will enjoy it more than anything. This brings back to the Internet. If speed wasn't needed, then why do we get faster connections, faster modems, and the introduction of Broadband? We need speed. If speed never existed, how would we get things done in time? Would life as we know it change? Well, Internet time would anyway. How long does it take for the average SR page to load on a 56K modem? Roughly 3-4 seconds. And what about broadband? Almost instantly. So you see, speed allows us to view things much quicker, and by the time around 10 pages have loaded, the Broadband connection is already 30 to 40 seconds ahead.

Speed can also be applied to computer games. It can be mentioned in the sense of how long the game takes to develop, how quickly it runs, how long you take to finish it and how long it sits on your shelf after you have completed it. Speed is a necessity of a developer. Without speed, how can a game developer make the game in time for the release date they promised? They can't always, which is why games are pushed back until they are ready. If speed came in a bottle, would we drink it all the time? I know I would, as it would allow me to get home from school earlier, gaining me precious minutes on my console or on the Internet.

Looking at today's world, we see people rushing around trying to get jobs done, or trying to get something downloaded of off the Internet, and for some reason, people believe that if they were faster, they won't have to rush around. Wrong. All it means is that if people are faster, they want to get more jobs done, which will still make them rush around. Again, this can be applied to the Internet. As I said earlier, we crave Internet speed, well, I do anyway, but if we were granted a faster connection that Broadband, it would allow us to download files quicker, but we would be tempted to try and download more files per second, which will again make the connection slower. There is no way around this problem, well, there is, but not many people realize it. In a world that moves faster than we do, we never stop for a minute and see the world at a slower rate, because we don't have time. If we were to slow down, or not download so many things per hour, maybe we would get a little faster. So, the key to going faster is to slow down. Possibly, but how fast can we go? How fast can we travel before we get tired, or how fast can connections get before we can get no faster. Only time can tell…

gamezfreak wrote:
> PoSh KiD wrote:
> What kind of connection do you have gamezfreak?
>
> Cable, NTL, 128k/s

*groans in envy*

PoSh KiD wrote:
> What kind of connection do you have gamezfreak?

Cable, NTL, 128k/s

Cool- sounds like fun Indian Dude. :)

i went on my dads bike today , we went to a bike show so that he could do some drag racing and get a new jacket , and on the way we did 130 odd mph down the motorway (my dad doesn't go fast with me on the back :)) and my whole body was numb , not with fright , not with coldness but with pure addrenaline and the wind wacking against my legs. I loved it ! The feel of that wind on me , you could do the same in a car but without the wind it wouldn't feel the same unless you stick your head out the window and not being enclosed makes the whole thing seem so MUCH faster !

But on the way home it was a different story... At the drag racing thing my dad burnt out his clutch so when he got up to 100mph the clutch kept slipping so we couldn't go any faster. And this guy looped his bike at the show ! It was my dad's boss when he was a teenager at a bike garage , and he had this really fast tuned up bike , and he started to wheelie , but then he didn't stop wheelying and the whole lot just went flying ! His bike went in one direction and he went the other , at first everyone jumped up and gasped , then he got up and everyone cheered then they all laughed at him :) I LOVE SPEED !

PoSh KiD wrote:
> I get my thrills if my damn computer downloads at 5KB a second!

Lucky! :D

gamezfreak wrote:
> I'm downloading at 17.4KB a second, so ner!


You lucky lucky boy.

I get my thrills if my damn computer downloads at 5KB a second!

What kind of connection do you have gamezfreak?

Thanks for the replies! :)

Some games really would be dire without speed. For instance, GT 1, 2 or 3. try 'Speeding' around a track at a measly 5 Mph. Not fun at all. Also, it could work the other way. Too much speed, as Twain mentioned, would ruin a game, as you wouldn't be able to keep up with what was happening. Oh, and VR wouldn't be too good if it was too fast, as people could suffer from motion sickness etc, and that would totally spoil the whole gaming experiance!

Yeah, speed is one of the things we "crave" when it comes to loosing our tempers in front of a computer screen because it's too slow to even play "Snails Attack"(*). Well, that's what I do anyway. Pretty soon, maybe in the near future, compuiter systems will be far too quick. Currently, games developers are already having to contemplate this. Putting "artificial slowdown into games because they think the loading times wouldn't seem right" (quote from NGC Magazine). If virtual reality ever comes about as a games system to be seen in every household, imagine what it'd be like playing one. VR, too fast to play the games properly.

Whitestripes wrote:
> For the record, I'm downloading at a whopping 2.18kb per second *_*

HAHAHA, Your so slow!

I'm downloading at 17.4KB a second, so ner!

For the record, I'm downloading at a whopping 2.18kb per second *_*