I've built gaming computers since the early 1990s, including doing so for a living for several years (www.kickassgear.com), and I never have any problems with getting games to work on PCs now. That was an issue back when NVidia cards were brand new on the market (maybe 1997?), but now all games work without any issues. At least they do for me. Drivers are never an issue now, especially if you have GeForce Experience installed (I don't). It makes the whole process idiot proof.
I've never owned a console because I have more than enough PCs here to accommodate any friends who are over for some gaming. The controllers on consoles are horrible and I don't know how anyone can stand them. In any case, I understand that many people don't want to spend that much money on a gaming machine, but all of my computers do double duty for work too. One of them is a dedicated imaging system for taking photomicrographs. So they get lots of real use as computers besides also being good for gaming.
People need to complain and stop this nonsense. Patents and copyrights should expire at 20 years max. Maybe less. This stifles creativity and productivity, and has nothing to do with the original intent of protecting inventors and writers. It has to stop.
I built gaming computers for years, and top of the line video cards do not become obsolete in a year or two, just like consoles don't. Maybe 5 years (2-3 upgrade cycles), and at that point you are down to under $150 a year for gaming with a really nice video card. My GTX 980 is not obsolete, but it is several years old. If gaming is what you do with your spare time, then I don't see that being prohibitively expensive. I usually avoid the super high end parts because there is almost always something at a much better price/performance ratio available. Compared with consoles, high end PCs are a completely different and superior gaming platform if you can afford one. Everyone has different preferences, and consoles provide very good performance for their price range. I much prefer playing games on PCs.
Whenever private, for profit companies get involved in anything, the problems increase; the pollution, the industrial accidents, and the corruption. I am not saying the government does things better, sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. I am just saying that the entire privatization movement, which is being driven by the wealthy, not the working people, is an attempt to reign in democracy, and facilitate oligarchy. There is currently no money to be made in space, so any private effort is going to rely on gimmicks including offering very rich people an orbit or two. That is not space exploration, that is not building a sustainable infrastructure for space travel, and it isn't doing the public any good.
With all their faults, I am sticking with the NASA model until they can actually mine asteroids, moons and planets. Otherwise, it is just shooting stars to the stars for profit.
Oh, so then it is better to send rich folk than heroes? Got it. I would never have come up with that myself. Government bad, capitalist good. Got it. That sounds like a really great idea. And it had been working out so well for us regular folk.
Don't need a cell phone. Use the wife's if I ever do need one. I don't need to talk with people when driving, and in my experience, most other people are just chatting anyway. If I traveled a lot I would get one. I think that most cell phone use is unnecessary. I am a computer guy, I build my own, I have 7 here, 5 of which are used just about every day. So that's where I get my tech fix.:)
I see some efforts in this direction, like the EFF, but most people don't seen to care much at all. Until people actually start running into problems (like getting turned down for a good job because of a dumb post on Facebook) they don't care when only other people get screwed. We'll see how it goes over the next couple of years, but I expect that the system is so entrenched now that turning it off will prove much harder than turning it on was.
Yeah, everything can be used for good or evil including snooping, but capitalism and greed often shift that equation in the direction of evil. Google even mentioned the fact in their early days (do no evil). Then they started full scale snooping. So if this were a more perfect world, I would agree that there is only a low chance that all the snooping will turn out poorly for everyone. In reality, privacy is going to become a very rare commodity, and I suspect that capitalism will figure a way to make lots of money by selling it to rich people who are inundated with snooping. For the rest of us, we get the ad laden version of everything, with snooping built in.
Yeah, let's privatize everything. Nothing could go wrong with that plan. Elon will build a space elevator for very wealthy people to visit the moon for a fancy lunch, and be home by dinner. The rest of us will buy lottery tickets.
Still driving my 22 year old Eclipse GSX with no onboard recording devices. That's the way I like my cars. Very surprised people are going along with the 1984 snooping on everyone thing. It was supposed to be a cautionary tale.
Option C: recycle, even if it is not cost effective. Lined landfills can also eventually leak. Overstuffed warehouses and lined landfills also cost money, so just do it the right way. Someone needs to invent a system that can chop up all modern electronics and melt it all down and sort out the different materials for reuse. But since that probably isn't practical, just pass a law that all electronics are a) repairable, preferably with replaceable modules, and b) easy to recycle when no longer worth repairing.
Funny you mention that, my main TV in my living room is the Sony 36" Trinitron XBR superfine pitch. Had it since 2000, and it still works great. It has always had a bit of an overscan issue (edge of image is off screen), but not too bad. The image is still really bright and clear. Main two reasons I haven't gotten rid of it is that it still works great, and that it weights almost 200 lb and I don't want to move it. And yeah, that glass is really thick.
Glass is an amorphous solid that is porous if you look under an electron microscope. It slowly dissolves in water (very slowly) and therefore continuously leaches whatever compounds it is composed of. It probably wouldn't be a big problem for local water if you dumped a few big CRT TVs here and there, but if you put a mountain of it somewhere and let it leach into the soil, it could get into the local groundwater. Look, if we want capitalism to survive and not destroy us and the planet while people are making a buck, we need to clean up after ourselves. You don't crap on the living room rug.
Here is my lab's journal article on glass leaching:
No, you have your hard drive in your computer, it stores all your information. What makes you think that damaging brain tissue with a computer implant will make the remaining brain cells live longer? That makes no sense whatsoever (I am a neuroscientist by trade). Neurons are postmitotic, except for some cells that populate the olfactory bulbs and hippocampus. Cells can't live forever, but if you did want to make them live longer you would figure out how to improve protein synthesis and cellular waste removal in the brain. A key would be to prevent ER stress associated with protein misfolding. Those are all medical/biological advancements, not computer implants.
Good luck with that. I can't imagine any problems would crop up, because they never do in the movies. So it must be good. Really though, why is it so hard to use a computer? Why do you need that in you head, instead of in front of your eyes? I see only downsides.
Keeping your brain working longer will take better medicine and biology, not implantable computers. It's called health. Try it some time.
Yeah, rich people don't get a lot of reality checks from their hired help. I just wish people were better at differentiating between Hollywood and real life. I hope Elon has a computer surgically implanted in his brain to show everyone how dumb an idea it is.
In the last 10,000 years the major driver of extinction for a large number of species, especially the megafauna, has been human predation, overfishing and habitat destruction. But another major driver has been that humans have moved many highly invasive species like rats to every corner of the globe. At this point it is uncertain if technology can fix this problem on islands, but considering how much damage has already been done it may be worth a try in some places. However, it is going to be really tough getting rid of all the invasive rodents we have introduced to ecosystems all around the world.
You missed my point, none of those armed conflicts were necessary, they were almost all acts of aggression by the US. And in every case, you did not need aircraft carriers. But then again, you probably think acts of aggression are a good thing.
Picard's Enterprise was not a boondoggle, and it got blown to pieces in space, eliminating any issue with radioactive waste here on earth. We are not so lucky with the real Enterprise, which did nothing for taxpayers right from the outset, except cost them lots of their hard earned money. Now we will pay more money, lots more money, to get rid of the thing we never should have made in the first place.
Education isn't just about getting a job, I recall something about democracy requiring an informed public, and that won't happen if people just watch the news.
Please tell me why this problem doesn't happen in developed and civilized countries around the world that provide free educations? Oh, because the US is incapable of doing simple things? You can just ignore the bad students, or kick them out of class. I can't believe a college professor is saying we need expensive college to keep the rif raf out. Nauseating.
I don't have kids, but I pay taxes for other people's kids to go to grade school for free. I have paid those taxes all my life, and I get nothing for it myself. In fact, much of my property tax on my house goes to pay for local education. But I am perfectly happy with this because education should be free in a civilized society. It is too important to to make it something people have to go into debt for. If we were not spending around $600 billion a year on bombing the middle east and occupying the rest of the world with military bases, it would be very easy to make community college free for everyone.
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I've built gaming computers since the early 1990s, including doing so for a living for several years (www.kickassgear.com), and I never have any problems with getting games to work on PCs now. That was an issue back when NVidia cards were brand new on the market (maybe 1997?), but now all games work without any issues. At least they do for me. Drivers are never an issue now, especially if you have GeForce Experience installed (I don't). It makes the whole process idiot proof.
I've never owned a console because I have more than enough PCs here to accommodate any friends who are over for some gaming. The controllers on consoles are horrible and I don't know how anyone can stand them. In any case, I understand that many people don't want to spend that much money on a gaming machine, but all of my computers do double duty for work too. One of them is a dedicated imaging system for taking photomicrographs. So they get lots of real use as computers besides also being good for gaming.
People need to complain and stop this nonsense. Patents and copyrights should expire at 20 years max. Maybe less. This stifles creativity and productivity, and has nothing to do with the original intent of protecting inventors and writers. It has to stop.
I built gaming computers for years, and top of the line video cards do not become obsolete in a year or two, just like consoles don't. Maybe 5 years (2-3 upgrade cycles), and at that point you are down to under $150 a year for gaming with a really nice video card. My GTX 980 is not obsolete, but it is several years old. If gaming is what you do with your spare time, then I don't see that being prohibitively expensive. I usually avoid the super high end parts because there is almost always something at a much better price/performance ratio available. Compared with consoles, high end PCs are a completely different and superior gaming platform if you can afford one. Everyone has different preferences, and consoles provide very good performance for their price range. I much prefer playing games on PCs.
Whenever private, for profit companies get involved in anything, the problems increase; the pollution, the industrial accidents, and the corruption. I am not saying the government does things better, sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. I am just saying that the entire privatization movement, which is being driven by the wealthy, not the working people, is an attempt to reign in democracy, and facilitate oligarchy. There is currently no money to be made in space, so any private effort is going to rely on gimmicks including offering very rich people an orbit or two. That is not space exploration, that is not building a sustainable infrastructure for space travel, and it isn't doing the public any good.
With all their faults, I am sticking with the NASA model until they can actually mine asteroids, moons and planets. Otherwise, it is just shooting stars to the stars for profit.
Oh, so then it is better to send rich folk than heroes? Got it. I would never have come up with that myself. Government bad, capitalist good. Got it. That sounds like a really great idea. And it had been working out so well for us regular folk.
Don't need a cell phone. Use the wife's if I ever do need one. I don't need to talk with people when driving, and in my experience, most other people are just chatting anyway. If I traveled a lot I would get one. I think that most cell phone use is unnecessary. I am a computer guy, I build my own, I have 7 here, 5 of which are used just about every day. So that's where I get my tech fix. :)
Yeah, you can get T-shirts that say 1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual.
https://www.amazon.com/1984-Wa...
Clearly, psychos in power who never liked the whole democracy thing had a different take.
I see some efforts in this direction, like the EFF, but most people don't seen to care much at all. Until people actually start running into problems (like getting turned down for a good job because of a dumb post on Facebook) they don't care when only other people get screwed. We'll see how it goes over the next couple of years, but I expect that the system is so entrenched now that turning it off will prove much harder than turning it on was.
Yeah, everything can be used for good or evil including snooping, but capitalism and greed often shift that equation in the direction of evil. Google even mentioned the fact in their early days (do no evil). Then they started full scale snooping. So if this were a more perfect world, I would agree that there is only a low chance that all the snooping will turn out poorly for everyone. In reality, privacy is going to become a very rare commodity, and I suspect that capitalism will figure a way to make lots of money by selling it to rich people who are inundated with snooping. For the rest of us, we get the ad laden version of everything, with snooping built in.
Yeah, let's privatize everything. Nothing could go wrong with that plan. Elon will build a space elevator for very wealthy people to visit the moon for a fancy lunch, and be home by dinner. The rest of us will buy lottery tickets.
Still driving my 22 year old Eclipse GSX with no onboard recording devices. That's the way I like my cars. Very surprised people are going along with the 1984 snooping on everyone thing. It was supposed to be a cautionary tale.
Option C: recycle, even if it is not cost effective. Lined landfills can also eventually leak. Overstuffed warehouses and lined landfills also cost money, so just do it the right way. Someone needs to invent a system that can chop up all modern electronics and melt it all down and sort out the different materials for reuse. But since that probably isn't practical, just pass a law that all electronics are a) repairable, preferably with replaceable modules, and b) easy to recycle when no longer worth repairing.
Funny you mention that, my main TV in my living room is the Sony 36" Trinitron XBR superfine pitch. Had it since 2000, and it still works great. It has always had a bit of an overscan issue (edge of image is off screen), but not too bad. The image is still really bright and clear. Main two reasons I haven't gotten rid of it is that it still works great, and that it weights almost 200 lb and I don't want to move it. And yeah, that glass is really thick.
Glass is an amorphous solid that is porous if you look under an electron microscope. It slowly dissolves in water (very slowly) and therefore continuously leaches whatever compounds it is composed of. It probably wouldn't be a big problem for local water if you dumped a few big CRT TVs here and there, but if you put a mountain of it somewhere and let it leach into the soil, it could get into the local groundwater. Look, if we want capitalism to survive and not destroy us and the planet while people are making a buck, we need to clean up after ourselves. You don't crap on the living room rug.
Here is my lab's journal article on glass leaching:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
No, you have your hard drive in your computer, it stores all your information. What makes you think that damaging brain tissue with a computer implant will make the remaining brain cells live longer? That makes no sense whatsoever (I am a neuroscientist by trade). Neurons are postmitotic, except for some cells that populate the olfactory bulbs and hippocampus. Cells can't live forever, but if you did want to make them live longer you would figure out how to improve protein synthesis and cellular waste removal in the brain. A key would be to prevent ER stress associated with protein misfolding. Those are all medical/biological advancements, not computer implants.
Good luck with that. I can't imagine any problems would crop up, because they never do in the movies. So it must be good. Really though, why is it so hard to use a computer? Why do you need that in you head, instead of in front of your eyes? I see only downsides.
Keeping your brain working longer will take better medicine and biology, not implantable computers. It's called health. Try it some time.
Yeah, rich people don't get a lot of reality checks from their hired help. I just wish people were better at differentiating between Hollywood and real life. I hope Elon has a computer surgically implanted in his brain to show everyone how dumb an idea it is.
In the last 10,000 years the major driver of extinction for a large number of species, especially the megafauna, has been human predation, overfishing and habitat destruction. But another major driver has been that humans have moved many highly invasive species like rats to every corner of the globe. At this point it is uncertain if technology can fix this problem on islands, but considering how much damage has already been done it may be worth a try in some places. However, it is going to be really tough getting rid of all the invasive rodents we have introduced to ecosystems all around the world.
You missed my point, none of those armed conflicts were necessary, they were almost all acts of aggression by the US. And in every case, you did not need aircraft carriers. But then again, you probably think acts of aggression are a good thing.
Picard's Enterprise was not a boondoggle, and it got blown to pieces in space, eliminating any issue with radioactive waste here on earth. We are not so lucky with the real Enterprise, which did nothing for taxpayers right from the outset, except cost them lots of their hard earned money. Now we will pay more money, lots more money, to get rid of the thing we never should have made in the first place.
Education isn't just about getting a job, I recall something about democracy requiring an informed public, and that won't happen if people just watch the news.
Please tell me why this problem doesn't happen in developed and civilized countries around the world that provide free educations? Oh, because the US is incapable of doing simple things? You can just ignore the bad students, or kick them out of class. I can't believe a college professor is saying we need expensive college to keep the rif raf out. Nauseating.
I don't have kids, but I pay taxes for other people's kids to go to grade school for free. I have paid those taxes all my life, and I get nothing for it myself. In fact, much of my property tax on my house goes to pay for local education. But I am perfectly happy with this because education should be free in a civilized society. It is too important to to make it something people have to go into debt for. If we were not spending around $600 billion a year on bombing the middle east and occupying the rest of the world with military bases, it would be very easy to make community college free for everyone.
Community college and state colleges should be free, like it is in civilized countries.
The Gene: an intimate history by Sidhartha Mukherjee