I recently had a situation where a perfectly legally licensed version of XP Pro failed the "Genuine Advantage" test.
I carried on using the machine for a while, as I could not be bothered to address the problem. Eventually, though the nagging became more and more insistent, so I started browsing the relevant pages on the M$ website. It all sounded like a lot of hassle, but they insisted that I must resolve the issue.
I did - by installing Ubuntu.
I'm obviously getting old, too. I used to love Manic Miner - it was great to play and I don't think realism or AI had much of a part to play in that.
Mind you, those pesky ghosts in Pac Man always seemed to know where I was going to go next!
An SLR is great for wide field astrophotography, but many find that the results obtained with inexpensive webcams are far superior - especially for planetary work.
At your budget, you may need to take a soldering iron to your webcam to get it to do long exposures, but that can be a lot of fun, too. It is very satisfying taking great pictures with gear that you've modified or built yourself.
If you haven't already, take a look at the QCUIAG forum on Yahoo! Groups. There's a wealth of information there and many of the regular contributors are incredibly helpful, approachable and encouraging. Be aware that it's a high volume group.
In the article, he expressly states that the sort of intensive number crunching you refer to is fine.
The concerns he IS expressing are related to interactive responsiveness.
I, for one, sympathise with these concerns. We should not need cutting edge hardware to smoothly re-position a window.
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I recently had a situation where a perfectly legally licensed version of XP Pro failed the "Genuine Advantage" test. I carried on using the machine for a while, as I could not be bothered to address the problem. Eventually, though the nagging became more and more insistent, so I started browsing the relevant pages on the M$ website. It all sounded like a lot of hassle, but they insisted that I must resolve the issue. I did - by installing Ubuntu.
I'm obviously getting old, too. I used to love Manic Miner - it was great to play and I don't think realism or AI had much of a part to play in that. Mind you, those pesky ghosts in Pac Man always seemed to know where I was going to go next!
An SLR is great for wide field astrophotography, but many find that the results obtained with inexpensive webcams are far superior - especially for planetary work. At your budget, you may need to take a soldering iron to your webcam to get it to do long exposures, but that can be a lot of fun, too. It is very satisfying taking great pictures with gear that you've modified or built yourself. If you haven't already, take a look at the QCUIAG forum on Yahoo! Groups. There's a wealth of information there and many of the regular contributors are incredibly helpful, approachable and encouraging. Be aware that it's a high volume group.
In the article, he expressly states that the sort of intensive number crunching you refer to is fine. The concerns he IS expressing are related to interactive responsiveness. I, for one, sympathise with these concerns. We should not need cutting edge hardware to smoothly re-position a window.