Actually, they released Half Life, Half Life Opposing Force, Blue Shift, and did a lot of work on Counterstrike and a few similar mods, as well as half of the groundwork for Half Life 2 All before Steam got into the content delivery business. They've always been incredibly busy. Given the vast, no, *huge* amount of time and work that went into Portal 2 (so much so that it makes Portal 1 look almost like a tech demo), they can be forgiven for not releasing things every six months to placate the ever shortening attention span of gamers here in the U.S.
Or would you rather compare Epic Games? Now that's some seriously slow work by comparison.
The shielding on the "pod"(or whatever shape it takes) could be shielded to 10-100x the extent of the rest of the ship, so they'd only have a moderate dose. Also, for deep space missions, the amount of radiation that they would be exposed to would of course decrease the farther that they got from our Sun. Also, because of their condition, they could sustain longer periods of acceleration, which means a slightly shorter trip (accelerating at 2G would be nearly impossible to try to live a normal life under, as an example). It's really the only viable option unless we find a miracle method to cross space quickly.
Of course, there would be a potential problem with the rest of the ship itself being dangerously radioactive after that long.
Possibly. But it's much easier to make a body-sized capsule essentially radiation-proof compared to the entire spaceship. There's also the consumables and waste that you don't have to deal with. And of course, very little aging. Radiation exposure might still be a problem, but it would be far less than in a normal spaceship. Using this for long distance trips would mean less exposure the more distant we traveled from our Sun.
It's not perfect, but it's far better than letting people rot in a tin can for months or years.
As near as they can tell, the material makeup of the Moon is identical to the Earth if you dig beneath the radiation and micrometeorite blasted surface. There should be everything we need to make aluminum and other materials there as well. Since it would be all underground, concerns about equipment would be fairly minor. You don't need massive equipment to haul dirt around when it's 1/6th the weight.
The main reason to build on the Moon vs in Orbit is the scale. It's hard to work in 0g and for these ships, we'd have to spend years building them. You can't just lift them into orbit unless we can make rockets that are 20-30X their current sizes. The Moon is far easier to deal with since most of the construction would be below ground and out of the way of radiation. There's also something to hold and press against as well, which makes mundane tasks like wrenching a bolt into place a trivial task versus a major problem in 0g. We could likely construct the ship in a fraction of the time. All we need is a huge cavern and a big set of doors.
Correct. It's like saying that we couldn't see planets around other stars. Well, 50 years ago we couldn't. But it was easily known, even then, that what we needed was a mirror that was large enough - and not much else. (of course making it was a tad harder, of course)
Yet the elevator will be possible within the next 40-50 years. It's merely a matter of creating a workable cable at this point. It's a lot like the Chunnel. Well, 50 years ago we couldn't do it. But we knew that we eventually would be able to take it work, because it wasn't impossible - just that we didn't have big enough machinery and tools to make it happen.
This is yet another reason why we need to perfect some sort of suspended animation technology first. If the crew member is in a self-contained and largely radiation-proof tank/capsule/etc for the times where they are not in orbit around some planet, then radiation isn't really a major concern. This can be mitigated, though, by building heavier shielding, though. But this means we'd have to assemble the ship in orbit or on the Moon. Adding ten tons of lead plating to your ship's hull isn't quite feasible if you do it on the ground;)
And this is why setting up operations eventually on the Moon is such a smart idea. We can waste less fuel getting into space(possibly even using some sort of Moon-based launching platform) and make it possible to use virtually off of the fuel for actually moving through space. Also, there are space and materials concerns that cease to be a real problem if you build on the Moon as you don't need to cram it all into a tiny space on a rocket. Even if you built something 6x the weight on the Moon as here on Earth, it would still take a fraction of the fuel to get into space as there's no atmosphere to deal with(among other advantages).
We can easily do this. We just need to get that Moon Base (tm) built first.
Exactly. There have been times when they have been completely proven wrong and/or found out something that they or nobody knew before. The bathroom tiles and fiberglass composite material was a perfect example of this. They never expected it to actually work as well as it did. The aforementioned dimpled car was also something that proved them wrong. And I kind of still expect NASCAR to be using it soon as even 1MPG difference for a little tweaking of the fiberglass shell on a race car seems to be worth trying. I envision a lot of small 1/4 inch or so dimples - just enough to barely be visible but have some effect.
Science is testing things with the scientific method. Everything else is B.S. and fluff that we've invented around it or that has been invented to make people feel important about themselves. There's still a lot to be said about the guy who is working on things in his garage and actually trying things as opposed to writing some report for a journal.
Yeah, that's probably true. It's also why I install Steam first and then make a disk image with it, the OS, and a few other things as a backup. If there's a crash, it's easier to just reinstall everything that way. But, yes, D2D does make it easier as the installers work just fine even years later on a different system.
Unless you have to do a complete system install, you can backup the right files right into the directory again (you can't just back up the entire Steam folder - it's a little more complicated than that). Then again I don't see Steam dropping this service for the next decade or more. By the time that Steam dies and the servers switch off, we'll all be using quantum computers or the machines will have taken over. ie - when Windows dies and is gone for a decade like DOS is, then you'd have to worry about your crappy old abandonware.
By that time, GOG will have the games for $5 or less as "classic" games anyways.
Plus, to be honest, I just don't get the whining about Steam. They have a business to run and this actually is a system that works reasonably well and keeps piracy at a minimum while being as unobtrusive as possible. There is no free lunch and there will be some sort of DRM or Sales/Account management or ID verification process or similar, so at some point you'll have to jump through a couple of hoops and hurdles and pay your fair price for the game. Direct2Drive is also similar. I have a DVD with my installs on it and a text file with the keys. If I lose that, well, yes, I have to download them again from D2D the same as Steam and jump through the same verification hurdles such that if their company dies, I'm boned. (keep your backups safe, ya?)
If you're still not happy, well, then you're being simply unreasonable. Nobody makes a game for the love of it any more and they deserve to be paid for their work. Yes, you bought the game and you should be able to do whatever you want with it. But they also have to make sure and verify that you are who you say you are. Re-downloading the game or installer package can't be done on faith any more. If all of that (whew) is still too hard, just buy the physical software.
I forgot to mention this as well. It's a fairly minor and normally routine step, though, to run and configure the video settings for each game that you install.
Technically, yes, but it's like having a 1000 hp car on L.A. freeways. In the end, nothing really goes a whole lot faster unless you were to redesign everything from the ground up to be able to operate at those speeds.
Yes, technically you have to connect to download them and buy them, but remaining connected is optional. So if their servers die you can still run your games. Very few people know this, though. I found it out when I moved a couple of years ago and it took them 3 weeks to get DSL service in. Steam still worked. That shows that they are at least making an effort to ride the fine line between DRM that works as a business and DRM that is there to just piss off everyone (Ubisoft and Sony, for example).
I don't really consider Steam to be DRM in the classical sense as it's more like the SSL connection that you use when you access your bank account online. Yes, there's control at the gate but beyond that, it's truly not seen or felt. Once you are in, you're free to do whatever you want. There's even an option to install custom mods and tell it to leave these specific titles alone in the future (I have two titles like that in fact)
The only service that I've seen that is less intrusive is Direct2Drive. A simple passkey combination and the installer is good to go. They even email it to you as a nice bonus. Very nice to work with.
GOG, of course, is awesome. I've bought several titles from them. But technically that also has DRM in a way as you have to log in to download/re-download the games.
Securom on the other hand is blatant, obvious, nasty, and hits you in the face every time it runs. That it also messes with DVD burning software and mangles drives to the point where you have to mess with your bios and registry to fix the problem is plainly too much. Also Steam when you remove it is gone. Securom has the same staying power and nastiness of a typical virus. Even using their "removal tool" on their website only gets rid of half of it. Gone should be gone.
Ubisoft, well, that's just them being asshats. I refuse to buy anything from them even with DRM removed just out of principle. Nasty, buggy, non-optimized, copy-protection overloaded junk. EA and Sony are almost as bad, so they also won't get my money. No big loss.
This is an old argument. There is a way around it.
1 - Steam doesn't ever include DRM on their end. If the application in question does install DRM as part of the setup, you can safely excise it from your system and the game will still run since the Steam application actually controls your right to access it/run the program. A typical Steam re-install is to download everything and then purge SecuRom. Thankfully virtually all of the games on Steam use this, so one brute-force purge at the end is enough to get it all at once.
When making a new system build, I generally get the firewall and other AV software running, make a backup of Documents and Settings take a physical screen shot of the applications folder, and also the system folders. Then set Steam to go overnight. Purging Securom is easy as pie - yank out all new registry changes, delete and rip out anything new on the drive that's not in the Steam folder or obviously Steam related, and do the same with the system folder. You should end up with a clean SecuRom-free system with Steam on it. That said, it's not as good as GoG. But GoG doesn't have the new games, either.
note - there are a few older games that use StarForce, so you do need to check before you buy. I "lost" a drive because of this. IDE drives brick themselves easily under windows. Get a SCIS or SATA DVD drive - something that doesn't use PIO mode at all and never will. Because once Windows has marked a drive as faulty, you'll never get it running properly again. note - the drive worked fine in an Apple afterwards and probably would in a new system. Windows needs to stop this idiocy because this is why DRM "kills" drives. The DRM generates errors and hang=ups and eventually Windows marks the drive as defective and you're done.
Steam really should crack down on the developers to only give them DRM free installers. But is is possible to have a DRM free Steam install.
2 - More importantly, all games on Steam can be run without being connected. You have to go into each and every game and turn off "keep this program up to date". You also have to turn Steam Community completely off. Then and only then can you go offline and have things run properly. The easiest way to do this is to unplug your computer(or disable steam in your firewall) from your router and reboot. Run Steam and it will complain and then give up. Reboot again and connect the internet back. You're good to go without ever hearing from Steam again.
Yes, I know about that. The issue is that while the processor might be faster, nothing attached to it is, so it effectively is spinning its wheels waiting for the rest of the system. You'd need a whole new motherboard design, new peripherals, new memory, and so on that could keep up. One weak link in the chain and the speed gains largely evaporate.
Heh. Then again, quantum physics may be a fancy kludge for something else. Similar to medieval astronomy and their horrendously complex calculations to make everything "fit". We just don't know yet. So far, attempts to unify all of the theories together have completely failed. Something is plainly wrong and needs to be thrown out or re-done (maybe all of it even).
I think that there is a way to "observe" such a change in state without actually observing it. We would need to be able to master gravity along the same lines as how we have essentially mastered electricity, though. That way we could passively look at how it's affecting the fabric of space around it and figure out the alignment of the atoms without actually influencing them in any way. I suspect that we may need hundreds or thousands of years more before we gain such technology, though.
Maybe some bright person will come up with a fancy kludge. I think we'll eventually do it. But not in our lifetimes, that's almost certain.
Well, we'll see. Some physicists think that we will be able to distinguish a change of state eventually (though this may be a LONG time in the future) and use it to do exactly this. Some do not. I think that we will overcome this "limitation" some day and be able to use it like this, since observing changes is really a technological problem on our end(kind of like how people said we couldn't ever fly to the moon. We can, but it takes amounts of energy and technology that 100 years ago, even, they would have considered absurd.
Shoot, 50 years ago, we couldn't see atoms. Or planets around other stars. If it's just a problem of observing the changed states, it's going to be possible. Some day.
While it didn't "run out", if it was in reduced power mode (which appears to be the case) with 10-20% left (not "out", technically), it'd surely be time to stop testing it and consider it to be done for the day. They probably drove it 45-50 miles and extrapolated the data that maybe they could get 5-10 more miles out if it but didn't want to drive at lower speeds to find out (no point, really). It's like Honda's Insight when Fifth Gear tested it. It lasted about 1/2 - 3/4 lap before it was providing barely any assistance. Sure, some, but 10-20% extra power isn't enough to be considered meaningful. The exact term Fifth Gear used, IIRC, was "it's gone" - now, technically, it wasn't *100%* gone, but it made no real difference. The second lap was no better than what you'd expect from the car with the engine providing all of the power.(not too good)
You didn't hear Honda complaining. The Insight isn't made to do track days and when driven at full throttle yes, the small battery pack depletes ridiculously fast. Neither, unsurprisingly, is the Tesla. It's quick - very quick - but it assumes that such acceleration will be brief and that the majority of your trip will be fairly normal driving or at fairly constant highway speeds once you get going that fast.
Top Gear drove it hard and well, it only lasted a short time in their hands.(I'm shocked they didn't make it explode or die like half of the stuff they test - heh) That said, it completely pummeled the other EVs that they had subjected to similar treatment in the past. Tesla needs to get off of their high horse and admit that it's not a race car and that when it's subjected to abnormal driving, range will suffer accordingly.
If one pair or group was physically moved to the moon (in theory), it would effectively become FTL communication though no actual data is being transmitted anyplace. The potential advantage of quantum entanglement is that you do an end-run around the entire problem of distance. You could have a device in theory 20 LY away and get data from it instantly. Of course, there's the issue of bandwidth and all, as well as numerous technical issues concerning longevity and repeatability.
My best guess for a potential use would be to send a large amount of data in a one-shot transmission as a notification or in an emergency. Kind of like those things hikers use so that people can find them when they are lost - just far better - press the panic button and it spits out your coordinates to the other device it's matched to. Even if you can't get a phone or GPS signal at your location. (ie - say, you're in a cave 200 ft below ground).
My guess is that it did run out at some point in the day. They probably weren't being that careful with it and were doing the typical hooliganism that they do on their test track (best part, IMO). It ran out and they did some napkin math to figure out how much that would be normally (my guess is that it ran out in less than 55 miles due to numerous 0-60 filming takes. They then probably calculated it out to roughly 55 miles of hard driving.
The same thing happened with the Prius that Fifth Gear tested. Ran flat-out on their test track, it got something like 18 or 19 mpg. The new Honda Insight also only got half a "hot lap" as well before the electric assist cut out/wasn't doing anything useful any more). These cars aren't made for sportscar type use but are really made for typical people who trundle along at the speed limit and accelerate like they are on Prozac.
Then again, the Tesla is being marketed as a true sports car. Expecting 50-60 miles range while being driven as such isn't that unreasonable. Most other electric vehicles wouldn't last 10 miles driven that hard.(which IIRC, both shows had also shown with other EVs in the past) If my EV got 55 miles in Top Gear's hands, I'd consider myself to have won the lottery.
It won't run any faster, though. The distances in a typical computer chip are so tiny and there are enough choke-points in a typical computer that it really won't run any faster. I think that's what people are forgetting - that this isn't about speed or faster computers but about long-distance communication.
Now, being able to communicate with a person, say, on the moon, in real-time would be useful. Or a computer network between planets. Also, transmission from anyplace on the planet. Though that could easily be a problem - imagine trying to track down a suspect who is using a quantum based communicator.
What will still exist in terms of a reasonable energy source? 1: Solar or earth-derived fuel sources. ie - geothermal, hydro-electric, solar, wind, and the like. Steam as well, naturally. 2: Some sort of fission or fusion. Possibly zero-point energy, cold fusion, and similar high-tech types as well.. Likely to be unpopular on Earth but popular in space where radiation and safety concerns are largely meaningless. 3: Artificially or biomass-made combustible fuels such as hydrogen and simple gasses like CNG and propane.
Anything combustible that's not renewable will be long long depleted. Any oil that is left will be plant-based or synthetic and used for lubrication purposes only.
Now, how long do you think it will take for oil to run out? I'd say not even 500 years. More like 100 at the rate that we're using it. Coal in another couple of hundred years. There's a real reason to invest in this technology because our current fuel sources are going to be gone in 4-5 generations.
Cars will be reduced to the following: - Electric - Biomass powered(hydrogen/cng/etc) - Steam, compressed air, and other non-polluting methods. The internal combustion engine will be dead in a hundred years. We moan about hybrids and all of thos stuff but it's the only thing that we'll soon have left. Or a bunch of bicycles. Your choice.
If we can make this happen with a 50 or 100 square mile power plant - or a series around the planet, why not? In the larger picture, it's where we're going anyways. And, given that the sun is getting hotter as it ages, sucking 1-2% off of the energy actually will combat global warming. Or we can build a ring around the equator. I kind of like the leeching solar power approach as it solves two problems at once.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, wait... *potentially*.
Wake me when there's a real problem. Has he actually tried it or is he just blowing smoke out of his backside?
Actually, they released Half Life, Half Life Opposing Force, Blue Shift, and did a lot of work on Counterstrike and a few similar mods, as well as half of the groundwork for Half Life 2 All before Steam got into the content delivery business. They've always been incredibly busy. Given the vast, no, *huge* amount of time and work that went into Portal 2 (so much so that it makes Portal 1 look almost like a tech demo), they can be forgiven for not releasing things every six months to placate the ever shortening attention span of gamers here in the U.S.
Or would you rather compare Epic Games? Now that's some seriously slow work by comparison.
The shielding on the "pod"(or whatever shape it takes) could be shielded to 10-100x the extent of the rest of the ship, so they'd only have a moderate dose. Also, for deep space missions, the amount of radiation that they would be exposed to would of course decrease the farther that they got from our Sun. Also, because of their condition, they could sustain longer periods of acceleration, which means a slightly shorter trip (accelerating at 2G would be nearly impossible to try to live a normal life under, as an example). It's really the only viable option unless we find a miracle method to cross space quickly.
Of course, there would be a potential problem with the rest of the ship itself being dangerously radioactive after that long.
Possibly. But it's much easier to make a body-sized capsule essentially radiation-proof compared to the entire spaceship. There's also the consumables and waste that you don't have to deal with. And of course, very little aging. Radiation exposure might still be a problem, but it would be far less than in a normal spaceship. Using this for long distance trips would mean less exposure the more distant we traveled from our Sun.
It's not perfect, but it's far better than letting people rot in a tin can for months or years.
As near as they can tell, the material makeup of the Moon is identical to the Earth if you dig beneath the radiation and micrometeorite blasted surface. There should be everything we need to make aluminum and other materials there as well. Since it would be all underground, concerns about equipment would be fairly minor. You don't need massive equipment to haul dirt around when it's 1/6th the weight.
The main reason to build on the Moon vs in Orbit is the scale. It's hard to work in 0g and for these ships, we'd have to spend years building them. You can't just lift them into orbit unless we can make rockets that are 20-30X their current sizes. The Moon is far easier to deal with since most of the construction would be below ground and out of the way of radiation. There's also something to hold and press against as well, which makes mundane tasks like wrenching a bolt into place a trivial task versus a major problem in 0g. We could likely construct the ship in a fraction of the time. All we need is a huge cavern and a big set of doors.
Correct. It's like saying that we couldn't see planets around other stars. Well, 50 years ago we couldn't. But it was easily known, even then, that what we needed was a mirror that was large enough - and not much else. (of course making it was a tad harder, of course)
Yet the elevator will be possible within the next 40-50 years. It's merely a matter of creating a workable cable at this point. It's a lot like the Chunnel. Well, 50 years ago we couldn't do it. But we knew that we eventually would be able to take it work, because it wasn't impossible - just that we didn't have big enough machinery and tools to make it happen.
This is yet another reason why we need to perfect some sort of suspended animation technology first. If the crew member is in a self-contained and largely radiation-proof tank/capsule/etc for the times where they are not in orbit around some planet, then radiation isn't really a major concern. This can be mitigated, though, by building heavier shielding, though. But this means we'd have to assemble the ship in orbit or on the Moon. Adding ten tons of lead plating to your ship's hull isn't quite feasible if you do it on the ground ;)
And this is why setting up operations eventually on the Moon is such a smart idea. We can waste less fuel getting into space(possibly even using some sort of Moon-based launching platform) and make it possible to use virtually off of the fuel for actually moving through space. Also, there are space and materials concerns that cease to be a real problem if you build on the Moon as you don't need to cram it all into a tiny space on a rocket. Even if you built something 6x the weight on the Moon as here on Earth, it would still take a fraction of the fuel to get into space as there's no atmosphere to deal with(among other advantages).
We can easily do this. We just need to get that Moon Base (tm) built first.
Exactly. There have been times when they have been completely proven wrong and/or found out something that they or nobody knew before. The bathroom tiles and fiberglass composite material was a perfect example of this. They never expected it to actually work as well as it did. The aforementioned dimpled car was also something that proved them wrong. And I kind of still expect NASCAR to be using it soon as even 1MPG difference for a little tweaking of the fiberglass shell on a race car seems to be worth trying. I envision a lot of small 1/4 inch or so dimples - just enough to barely be visible but have some effect.
Science is testing things with the scientific method. Everything else is B.S. and fluff that we've invented around it or that has been invented to make people feel important about themselves. There's still a lot to be said about the guy who is working on things in his garage and actually trying things as opposed to writing some report for a journal.
Yeah, that's probably true. It's also why I install Steam first and then make a disk image with it, the OS, and a few other things as a backup. If there's a crash, it's easier to just reinstall everything that way. But, yes, D2D does make it easier as the installers work just fine even years later on a different system.
Unless you have to do a complete system install, you can backup the right files right into the directory again (you can't just back up the entire Steam folder - it's a little more complicated than that). Then again I don't see Steam dropping this service for the next decade or more. By the time that Steam dies and the servers switch off, we'll all be using quantum computers or the machines will have taken over. ie - when Windows dies and is gone for a decade like DOS is, then you'd have to worry about your crappy old abandonware.
By that time, GOG will have the games for $5 or less as "classic" games anyways.
Plus, to be honest, I just don't get the whining about Steam. They have a business to run and this actually is a system that works reasonably well and keeps piracy at a minimum while being as unobtrusive as possible. There is no free lunch and there will be some sort of DRM or Sales/Account management or ID verification process or similar, so at some point you'll have to jump through a couple of hoops and hurdles and pay your fair price for the game. Direct2Drive is also similar. I have a DVD with my installs on it and a text file with the keys. If I lose that, well, yes, I have to download them again from D2D the same as Steam and jump through the same verification hurdles such that if their company dies, I'm boned. (keep your backups safe, ya?)
If you're still not happy, well, then you're being simply unreasonable. Nobody makes a game for the love of it any more and they deserve to be paid for their work. Yes, you bought the game and you should be able to do whatever you want with it. But they also have to make sure and verify that you are who you say you are. Re-downloading the game or installer package can't be done on faith any more. If all of that (whew) is still too hard, just buy the physical software.
I forgot to mention this as well. It's a fairly minor and normally routine step, though, to run and configure the video settings for each game that you install.
Technically, yes, but it's like having a 1000 hp car on L.A. freeways. In the end, nothing really goes a whole lot faster unless you were to redesign everything from the ground up to be able to operate at those speeds.
Yes, technically you have to connect to download them and buy them, but remaining connected is optional. So if their servers die you can still run your games. Very few people know this, though. I found it out when I moved a couple of years ago and it took them 3 weeks to get DSL service in. Steam still worked. That shows that they are at least making an effort to ride the fine line between DRM that works as a business and DRM that is there to just piss off everyone (Ubisoft and Sony, for example).
I don't really consider Steam to be DRM in the classical sense as it's more like the SSL connection that you use when you access your bank account online. Yes, there's control at the gate but beyond that, it's truly not seen or felt. Once you are in, you're free to do whatever you want. There's even an option to install custom mods and tell it to leave these specific titles alone in the future (I have two titles like that in fact)
The only service that I've seen that is less intrusive is Direct2Drive. A simple passkey combination and the installer is good to go. They even email it to you as a nice bonus. Very nice to work with.
GOG, of course, is awesome. I've bought several titles from them. But technically that also has DRM in a way as you have to log in to download/re-download the games.
Securom on the other hand is blatant, obvious, nasty, and hits you in the face every time it runs. That it also messes with DVD burning software and mangles drives to the point where you have to mess with your bios and registry to fix the problem is plainly too much. Also Steam when you remove it is gone. Securom has the same staying power and nastiness of a typical virus. Even using their "removal tool" on their website only gets rid of half of it. Gone should be gone.
Ubisoft, well, that's just them being asshats. I refuse to buy anything from them even with DRM removed just out of principle. Nasty, buggy, non-optimized, copy-protection overloaded junk. EA and Sony are almost as bad, so they also won't get my money. No big loss.
This is an old argument. There is a way around it.
1 - Steam doesn't ever include DRM on their end. If the application in question does install DRM as part of the setup, you can safely excise it from your system and the game will still run since the Steam application actually controls your right to access it/run the program. A typical Steam re-install is to download everything and then purge SecuRom. Thankfully virtually all of the games on Steam use this, so one brute-force purge at the end is enough to get it all at once.
When making a new system build, I generally get the firewall and other AV software running, make a backup of Documents and Settings take a physical screen shot of the applications folder, and also the system folders. Then set Steam to go overnight. Purging Securom is easy as pie - yank out all new registry changes, delete and rip out anything new on the drive that's not in the Steam folder or obviously Steam related, and do the same with the system folder. You should end up with a clean SecuRom-free system with Steam on it. That said, it's not as good as GoG. But GoG doesn't have the new games, either.
note - there are a few older games that use StarForce, so you do need to check before you buy. I "lost" a drive because of this. IDE drives brick themselves easily under windows. Get a SCIS or SATA DVD drive - something that doesn't use PIO mode at all and never will. Because once Windows has marked a drive as faulty, you'll never get it running properly again. note - the drive worked fine in an Apple afterwards and probably would in a new system. Windows needs to stop this idiocy because this is why DRM "kills" drives. The DRM generates errors and hang=ups and eventually Windows marks the drive as defective and you're done.
Steam really should crack down on the developers to only give them DRM free installers. But is is possible to have a DRM free Steam install.
2 - More importantly, all games on Steam can be run without being connected. You have to go into each and every game and turn off "keep this program up to date". You also have to turn Steam Community completely off. Then and only then can you go offline and have things run properly. The easiest way to do this is to unplug your computer(or disable steam in your firewall) from your router and reboot. Run Steam and it will complain and then give up. Reboot again and connect the internet back. You're good to go without ever hearing from Steam again.
Yes, I know about that. The issue is that while the processor might be faster, nothing attached to it is, so it effectively is spinning its wheels waiting for the rest of the system. You'd need a whole new motherboard design, new peripherals, new memory, and so on that could keep up. One weak link in the chain and the speed gains largely evaporate.
Heh. Then again, quantum physics may be a fancy kludge for something else. Similar to medieval astronomy and their horrendously complex calculations to make everything "fit". We just don't know yet. So far, attempts to unify all of the theories together have completely failed. Something is plainly wrong and needs to be thrown out or re-done (maybe all of it even).
I think that there is a way to "observe" such a change in state without actually observing it. We would need to be able to master gravity along the same lines as how we have essentially mastered electricity, though. That way we could passively look at how it's affecting the fabric of space around it and figure out the alignment of the atoms without actually influencing them in any way. I suspect that we may need hundreds or thousands of years more before we gain such technology, though.
Maybe some bright person will come up with a fancy kludge. I think we'll eventually do it. But not in our lifetimes, that's almost certain.
Well, we'll see. Some physicists think that we will be able to distinguish a change of state eventually (though this may be a LONG time in the future) and use it to do exactly this. Some do not. I think that we will overcome this "limitation" some day and be able to use it like this, since observing changes is really a technological problem on our end(kind of like how people said we couldn't ever fly to the moon. We can, but it takes amounts of energy and technology that 100 years ago, even, they would have considered absurd.
Shoot, 50 years ago, we couldn't see atoms. Or planets around other stars. If it's just a problem of observing the changed states, it's going to be possible. Some day.
While it didn't "run out", if it was in reduced power mode (which appears to be the case) with 10-20% left (not "out", technically), it'd surely be time to stop testing it and consider it to be done for the day. They probably drove it 45-50 miles and extrapolated the data that maybe they could get 5-10 more miles out if it but didn't want to drive at lower speeds to find out (no point, really). It's like Honda's Insight when Fifth Gear tested it. It lasted about 1/2 - 3/4 lap before it was providing barely any assistance. Sure, some, but 10-20% extra power isn't enough to be considered meaningful. The exact term Fifth Gear used, IIRC, was "it's gone" - now, technically, it wasn't *100%* gone, but it made no real difference. The second lap was no better than what you'd expect from the car with the engine providing all of the power.(not too good)
You didn't hear Honda complaining. The Insight isn't made to do track days and when driven at full throttle yes, the small battery pack depletes ridiculously fast. Neither, unsurprisingly, is the Tesla. It's quick - very quick - but it assumes that such acceleration will be brief and that the majority of your trip will be fairly normal driving or at fairly constant highway speeds once you get going that fast.
Top Gear drove it hard and well, it only lasted a short time in their hands.(I'm shocked they didn't make it explode or die like half of the stuff they test - heh) That said, it completely pummeled the other EVs that they had subjected to similar treatment in the past. Tesla needs to get off of their high horse and admit that it's not a race car and that when it's subjected to abnormal driving, range will suffer accordingly.
If one pair or group was physically moved to the moon (in theory), it would effectively become FTL communication though no actual data is being transmitted anyplace. The potential advantage of quantum entanglement is that you do an end-run around the entire problem of distance. You could have a device in theory 20 LY away and get data from it instantly. Of course, there's the issue of bandwidth and all, as well as numerous technical issues concerning longevity and repeatability.
My best guess for a potential use would be to send a large amount of data in a one-shot transmission as a notification or in an emergency. Kind of like those things hikers use so that people can find them when they are lost - just far better - press the panic button and it spits out your coordinates to the other device it's matched to. Even if you can't get a phone or GPS signal at your location. (ie - say, you're in a cave 200 ft below ground).
My guess is that it did run out at some point in the day. They probably weren't being that careful with it and were doing the typical hooliganism that they do on their test track (best part, IMO). It ran out and they did some napkin math to figure out how much that would be normally (my guess is that it ran out in less than 55 miles due to numerous 0-60 filming takes. They then probably calculated it out to roughly 55 miles of hard driving.
The same thing happened with the Prius that Fifth Gear tested. Ran flat-out on their test track, it got something like 18 or 19 mpg. The new Honda Insight also only got half a "hot lap" as well before the electric assist cut out/wasn't doing anything useful any more). These cars aren't made for sportscar type use but are really made for typical people who trundle along at the speed limit and accelerate like they are on Prozac.
Then again, the Tesla is being marketed as a true sports car. Expecting 50-60 miles range while being driven as such isn't that unreasonable. Most other electric vehicles wouldn't last 10 miles driven that hard.(which IIRC, both shows had also shown with other EVs in the past) If my EV got 55 miles in Top Gear's hands, I'd consider myself to have won the lottery.
It won't run any faster, though. The distances in a typical computer chip are so tiny and there are enough choke-points in a typical computer that it really won't run any faster. I think that's what people are forgetting - that this isn't about speed or faster computers but about long-distance communication.
Now, being able to communicate with a person, say, on the moon, in real-time would be useful. Or a computer network between planets. Also, transmission from anyplace on the planet. Though that could easily be a problem - imagine trying to track down a suspect who is using a quantum based communicator.
Sorry, my "crystal ball" only works concerning known outcomes concerning technology.
OK. Let's got forward 10,000 years.
What will still exist in terms of a reasonable energy source?
1: Solar or earth-derived fuel sources. ie - geothermal, hydro-electric, solar, wind, and the like. Steam as well, naturally.
2: Some sort of fission or fusion. Possibly zero-point energy, cold fusion, and similar high-tech types as well.. Likely to be unpopular on Earth but popular in space where radiation and safety concerns are largely meaningless.
3: Artificially or biomass-made combustible fuels such as hydrogen and simple gasses like CNG and propane.
Anything combustible that's not renewable will be long long depleted. Any oil that is left will be plant-based or synthetic and used for lubrication purposes only.
Now, how long do you think it will take for oil to run out? I'd say not even 500 years. More like 100 at the rate that we're using it. Coal in another couple of hundred years. There's a real reason to invest in this technology because our current fuel sources are going to be gone in 4-5 generations.
Cars will be reduced to the following:
- Electric
- Biomass powered(hydrogen/cng/etc)
- Steam, compressed air, and other non-polluting methods.
The internal combustion engine will be dead in a hundred years. We moan about hybrids and all of thos stuff but it's the only thing that we'll soon have left. Or a bunch of bicycles. Your choice.
If we can make this happen with a 50 or 100 square mile power plant - or a series around the planet, why not? In the larger picture, it's where we're going anyways. And, given that the sun is getting hotter as it ages, sucking 1-2% off of the energy actually will combat global warming. Or we can build a ring around the equator. I kind of like the leeching solar power approach as it solves two problems at once.