Shuttle mission are much cheaper now, which is how on NASA's meager shuttle budget they can afford to run missions multiple times a month sometimes (i.e. ISS parts). I believe they are 50-100 million at the moment, per flight. This is not comparable to moon missions as for those you have to break out of Earth's gravity--the shuttle isn't even going a thousandth the distance from Earth.
That you're going to need a rocket big enough to get your spaceplane into orbit, but small enough to not have to be tossed off into the atmosphere every time. This is a *very* big problem.
Rendering doesn't even use the graphics card, you know:). If you play games with your computer, and thats the main thing you do, it will be a blessing to be able to play with 4x/16x at high res and high details.
Also, trust me, I've been a graphics card enthusiast for 5 years and I know what I'm talking about:). If you have any questions, see the Futuremark forums at discuss.futuremark.com:).
Yes, but on VIVOs, the pipelines are simply disabled, not nonexistant. I know, because I've flashed many of them and they all work fine. Its because of how ATI handles their chip fab process--chips that can't handle XT speeds but have 16 pipes are clocked down to Pro speeds and 4 of the pipes disabled through the BIOS. And a flash re-enables them. All VIVOs have these chips--most regular X800s don't.
At 450 dollars you can get a Radeon x800 Pro VIVO, which has a 100% chance of flashing to a full x800XT with all 16 pixel pipelines.
Or if you want an nvidia card (i.e. you have Linux and want drivers that, uh, work), the 6800GT is almost as fast and at 400 dollars, its a great deal.
The 6600 and x700s seem almost as fast as the 6800NU (300 dollars) at first, but note--they have 128-bit memory. This means that they will suffer a much larger hit when enabling antialiasing, as their memory is slower and AA requires a lot of memory bandwidth.
I don't understand how 400 dollars is too much for a card, as I can easily assemble a high-end computer for 1200-1400 dollars, like one of these:
Athlon 64 3200+ (200), Asus A78 (150), 1GB Dual Channel Corsair (300), 6800GT (400), 160GB hard drive (100), 480 watt power supply (100), case and floppy and crappy cdrom (50). That's 1300 dollars for something better than the 4000 dollar computer that Dell is offering, and as good as a 3500 dollar Alienware. So don't bitch about the price of graphics cards--you get so much for your money these days its insane.
Plus, cost won't even work for this--for around 1000 I can get an Athlon 64 3200+, 1GB of RAM, a DVD-RW/CR-RW combo drive, a 74GB Raptor, and a GeForce 6800, all in a nice case with a 480 watt quality Tagan.
However, Dell will want to sell you for the same price a computer with a 3Ghz Pentium 4 (slower), 512MB of RAM (less), a Radeon X300SE (5-6 times slower than the 6800), an 80GB crap HD, etc, for the same price, and also call it whatever level the first one was.
They've done the whole analysis--a space elevator will be surprisingly easy to build if built correctly. Of course, add the word NASA onto it and it would probably at least double the cost...;).
There's a point in going, I'll admit, but its not worth 500 billion dollars to go to Mars. Plus, they expect nanotubes to be strong enough in 4-5 years... not too long.
What a waste. Inside that budget is the fact that they're cutting everything worthwhile that the agency does in favor of some dream of "going to the moon/mars." There's no point in going to the moon/mars. A better option would be to build a space elevator (5-10 billion dollars) and then do whatever missions to mars/the moon for 100 times less (as the space elevator would transport material up into space for just 100 dollars a pound, instead of tens of thousands...)
The only thing I'm worried about in relation to the elevator is terrorists, heh. But I'm guessing they'll have antiaircraft guns around the facility for miles.
Basically, if you can think of a problem, they've solved it. It will cost about 10 billion dollars to build, and the materials will be available quite soon. Some examples of problems you might think of:
Weather: The anchor on the top is so heavy and is moving so fast that it won't be even shaken. Plus its strong enough to withstand the fastest winds.
Ionization in the atmosphere: Easy, coat it with gold at higher altitudes.
What if a plane hits it? It would survive--its strong enough that it would cut the plane in half instead of having the plane go through it.
Something tells me that if google comes out with a browser, and continues to come out with program after program, they may... as hard as it is to say... become almost a new Microsoft ~.~
What I meant is that if the game was single player (i.e. no socializing), it would be boring as hell and they wouldn't play it. By socializing I don't just mean chatting--I mean playing with other people, grouping, trading, just plain having fun. Which is why most MMORPGs out there wouldn't even be worth mentioning if they were SP.
that the majority of MMOG players play to socialize, not to mindlessly kill monsters. For that purpose there are macros. While in every game there are always a small 1% who simply sit alone and powerlevel, 99% join clans/guilds/corporations and/or socialiize.
Like, for example, last night, I spent hours chatting with guys on the OOC channel in Anarchy Online. It turned a boring night of leveling into a seriously awesome night. Few non-MMOG-gamers realize how much socializing matters in these types of games. They simply focus on the mindless powergamer who's the first to hit max level.
But then again, to be fair, plenty of the top level people socialize! I used to know the guy who held the record for a 3-day run to level 150 during the Earth and Beyond beta. He was an awesome guy, loved giving stuff to new players (his entire method of leveling involved this--get a massive amount of easy-to-mine gas from gas clouds, give it to a noob, get levels of trade experience, repeat 1000 times).
I never lock my bike. I don't bother. I have a 10-year-old hand-me-down Mongoose. Very fast hybrid, 21-speed... but its so old and run down, so dirty and ugly, no one would ever want to steal it when its next to 5 shiny new Treks:)
I installed it, and uninstalled it 30 minutes later. On my machine it broke InstallShield (couldn't install anything), and Windows Media Player stopped working altogether. System Restore didn't evevn fix media player, and finally install version 10 over the old one managed to fix it.
I don't care how insecure Windows XP is--if it doesn't work, there's no point in it being secure or not. I use Firefox, updated as often as possible, a NAT router, and solid passwords on my admin/hidden Safe Mode admin accounts. And if I need to run a server or something that truly does require speed and security, that's for my Mepis installation to take care of:).
A Pentium-M wouldn't be a bad choice... even though you'd have to get a laptop for it, they use only 21 watts of power. They're also insanely fast--in some tests they come out ahead of A64s clock-for-clock.
Although you probably want to go with a desktop, in which case a mobile Athlon (45 watts) would be a nice choice.
Um, Stargate is NEW, and makes Star Trek look like total shit... best sci-fi show ever, period. Its the only reason IMO why the sci-fi channel exists, lol, its more like the Stargate channel:).
Noticed how many Linux-excluding or "anti-piracy" things Microsoft proposes seem to disappear? This one will too. Ask the Justice Department for more details.
I wasn't saying that the fact that we were causing global warming was proven, just of course, obviously, the temperature is rising! Covering that simple fact up is like saying the Earth is flat.
The reasons why many believe that it is human-caused are pretty simple. First of all, it has conincided exactly with human activity. As the industrial revolution started, there were small hints of warming, then towards the 1950s-1970s more warming, and now the most ever in recorded history. But that could just be a coincidence, right?
The other thing is the amount of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere. Measurements show that we are pumping twice as much CO2 into the atmosphere as plants around the Earth can handle. But still, that might be a small, and minor factor, right?
Next reason. The poles are warming much faster than the rest of the planet. This would be easily explained if the majority of the problem was pollution, as just like ozone-zapping CFCs, most other pollution also tends to drift towards the poles. This also discounts the possibility of the sun heating up slightly (which would be quite reasonable), as it would warm all parts of the Earth by an equal percentage (in terms of light hitting land), while global warming is warming the poles more than anything else.
One of the things that is also happening is that some types of pollution actually deflect sunlight by creating clouds. Many scientists believe that they may actually be slowing global warming (a good thing, if it ever gets too bad maybe we could just release millions of tons of these into the atmosphere...). This explains the pole phenomenon even more. The poles are already covered with ice, and thus reflect almost all their sunlight back into space. Thus a sun-reflecting pollutant wouldn't have any effect, but sun-trapping pollutants would. So while they might nearly cancel each other out in other parts of the world, at the poles, the CO2 rules.
While it is possible that global warming isn't caused by humans, it is unlikely, simply because of how much pollutants we are pumping into the atmosphere--its going somewhere. My personal belief is that the warming is a lot worse than we think it is--its just that we've pumped enough sun-reflecting pollutants into the atmosphere that its almost negated the CO2, etc. Of course, the poles are still melting...
BTW, sorry for not getting any links for this--you can probably find them for yourself using google. A lot of this was also just a little analysis of mine, sort of to explain to the nonbelievers why the believers believe;). Don't flame me:).
Now yes I've had lots of programs crash. Anarchy Online has crashed 19 times in the past two days alone. But I've NEVER had Windows XP or 2000 crash. Ever. Out of probably thousands of bootups. Even my Windows 98 system was crash-free for over 3 years of solid use. Obviously if you're a noob using Windows you'll make the system crash all over from spyware, etc... but then again, if you're a noob in linux and click no/yes on all the wrong dialogues, you'll get the same:)
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Shuttle mission are much cheaper now, which is how on NASA's meager shuttle budget they can afford to run missions multiple times a month sometimes (i.e. ISS parts). I believe they are 50-100 million at the moment, per flight. This is not comparable to moon missions as for those you have to break out of Earth's gravity--the shuttle isn't even going a thousandth the distance from Earth.
That you're going to need a rocket big enough to get your spaceplane into orbit, but small enough to not have to be tossed off into the atmosphere every time. This is a *very* big problem.
Rendering doesn't even use the graphics card, you know :). If you play games with your computer, and thats the main thing you do, it will be a blessing to be able to play with 4x/16x at high res and high details.
Also, trust me, I've been a graphics card enthusiast for 5 years and I know what I'm talking about :). If you have any questions, see the Futuremark forums at discuss.futuremark.com :).
Yes, but on VIVOs, the pipelines are simply disabled, not nonexistant. I know, because I've flashed many of them and they all work fine. Its because of how ATI handles their chip fab process--chips that can't handle XT speeds but have 16 pipes are clocked down to Pro speeds and 4 of the pipes disabled through the BIOS. And a flash re-enables them. All VIVOs have these chips--most regular X800s don't.
At 450 dollars you can get a Radeon x800 Pro VIVO, which has a 100% chance of flashing to a full x800XT with all 16 pixel pipelines.
Or if you want an nvidia card (i.e. you have Linux and want drivers that, uh, work), the 6800GT is almost as fast and at 400 dollars, its a great deal.
The 6600 and x700s seem almost as fast as the 6800NU (300 dollars) at first, but note--they have 128-bit memory. This means that they will suffer a much larger hit when enabling antialiasing, as their memory is slower and AA requires a lot of memory bandwidth.
I don't understand how 400 dollars is too much for a card, as I can easily assemble a high-end computer for 1200-1400 dollars, like one of these:
Athlon 64 3200+ (200), Asus A78 (150), 1GB Dual Channel Corsair (300), 6800GT (400), 160GB hard drive (100), 480 watt power supply (100), case and floppy and crappy cdrom (50). That's 1300 dollars for something better than the 4000 dollar computer that Dell is offering, and as good as a 3500 dollar Alienware. So don't bitch about the price of graphics cards--you get so much for your money these days its insane.
Plus, cost won't even work for this--for around 1000 I can get an Athlon 64 3200+, 1GB of RAM, a DVD-RW/CR-RW combo drive, a 74GB Raptor, and a GeForce 6800, all in a nice case with a 480 watt quality Tagan.
However, Dell will want to sell you for the same price a computer with a 3Ghz Pentium 4 (slower), 512MB of RAM (less), a Radeon X300SE (5-6 times slower than the 6800), an 80GB crap HD, etc, for the same price, and also call it whatever level the first one was.
If I want to rob a store, I have to leave a note on the desk with my name and phone number? *insert rolling eyes here*
They've done the whole analysis--a space elevator will be surprisingly easy to build if built correctly. Of course, add the word NASA onto it and it would probably at least double the cost... ;).
There's a point in going, I'll admit, but its not worth 500 billion dollars to go to Mars. Plus, they expect nanotubes to be strong enough in 4-5 years... not too long.
What a waste. Inside that budget is the fact that they're cutting everything worthwhile that the agency does in favor of some dream of "going to the moon/mars." There's no point in going to the moon/mars. A better option would be to build a space elevator (5-10 billion dollars) and then do whatever missions to mars/the moon for 100 times less (as the space elevator would transport material up into space for just 100 dollars a pound, instead of tens of thousands...)
The only thing I'm worried about in relation to the elevator is terrorists, heh. But I'm guessing they'll have antiaircraft guns around the facility for miles.
Basically, if you can think of a problem, they've solved it. It will cost about 10 billion dollars to build, and the materials will be available quite soon. Some examples of problems you might think of:
Weather: The anchor on the top is so heavy and is moving so fast that it won't be even shaken. Plus its strong enough to withstand the fastest winds.
Ionization in the atmosphere: Easy, coat it with gold at higher altitudes.
What if a plane hits it? It would survive--its strong enough that it would cut the plane in half instead of having the plane go through it.
Something tells me that if google comes out with a browser, and continues to come out with program after program, they may... as hard as it is to say... become almost a new Microsoft ~.~
The location of the company is an uninhabited island in the pacific, and its completely obvious that its just a scam... and this got on /.?!
What I meant is that if the game was single player (i.e. no socializing), it would be boring as hell and they wouldn't play it. By socializing I don't just mean chatting--I mean playing with other people, grouping, trading, just plain having fun. Which is why most MMORPGs out there wouldn't even be worth mentioning if they were SP.
that the majority of MMOG players play to socialize, not to mindlessly kill monsters. For that purpose there are macros. While in every game there are always a small 1% who simply sit alone and powerlevel, 99% join clans/guilds/corporations and/or socialiize.
Like, for example, last night, I spent hours chatting with guys on the OOC channel in Anarchy Online. It turned a boring night of leveling into a seriously awesome night. Few non-MMOG-gamers realize how much socializing matters in these types of games. They simply focus on the mindless powergamer who's the first to hit max level.
But then again, to be fair, plenty of the top level people socialize! I used to know the guy who held the record for a 3-day run to level 150 during the Earth and Beyond beta. He was an awesome guy, loved giving stuff to new players (his entire method of leveling involved this--get a massive amount of easy-to-mine gas from gas clouds, give it to a noob, get levels of trade experience, repeat 1000 times).
I never lock my bike. I don't bother. I have a 10-year-old hand-me-down Mongoose. Very fast hybrid, 21-speed... but its so old and run down, so dirty and ugly, no one would ever want to steal it when its next to 5 shiny new Treks :)
I installed it, and uninstalled it 30 minutes later. On my machine it broke InstallShield (couldn't install anything), and Windows Media Player stopped working altogether. System Restore didn't evevn fix media player, and finally install version 10 over the old one managed to fix it.
:).
I don't care how insecure Windows XP is--if it doesn't work, there's no point in it being secure or not. I use Firefox, updated as often as possible, a NAT router, and solid passwords on my admin/hidden Safe Mode admin accounts. And if I need to run a server or something that truly does require speed and security, that's for my Mepis installation to take care of
A Pentium-M wouldn't be a bad choice... even though you'd have to get a laptop for it, they use only 21 watts of power. They're also insanely fast--in some tests they come out ahead of A64s clock-for-clock.
Although you probably want to go with a desktop, in which case a mobile Athlon (45 watts) would be a nice choice.
Um, Stargate is NEW, and makes Star Trek look like total shit... best sci-fi show ever, period. Its the only reason IMO why the sci-fi channel exists, lol, its more like the Stargate channel :).
Noticed how many Linux-excluding or "anti-piracy" things Microsoft proposes seem to disappear? This one will too. Ask the Justice Department for more details.
But there's still Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis to keep us warm :).
I wasn't saying that the fact that we were causing global warming was proven, just of course, obviously, the temperature is rising! Covering that simple fact up is like saying the Earth is flat.
;). Don't flame me :).
The reasons why many believe that it is human-caused are pretty simple. First of all, it has conincided exactly with human activity. As the industrial revolution started, there were small hints of warming, then towards the 1950s-1970s more warming, and now the most ever in recorded history. But that could just be a coincidence, right?
The other thing is the amount of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere. Measurements show that we are pumping twice as much CO2 into the atmosphere as plants around the Earth can handle. But still, that might be a small, and minor factor, right?
Next reason. The poles are warming much faster than the rest of the planet. This would be easily explained if the majority of the problem was pollution, as just like ozone-zapping CFCs, most other pollution also tends to drift towards the poles. This also discounts the possibility of the sun heating up slightly (which would be quite reasonable), as it would warm all parts of the Earth by an equal percentage (in terms of light hitting land), while global warming is warming the poles more than anything else.
One of the things that is also happening is that some types of pollution actually deflect sunlight by creating clouds. Many scientists believe that they may actually be slowing global warming (a good thing, if it ever gets too bad maybe we could just release millions of tons of these into the atmosphere...). This explains the pole phenomenon even more. The poles are already covered with ice, and thus reflect almost all their sunlight back into space. Thus a sun-reflecting pollutant wouldn't have any effect, but sun-trapping pollutants would. So while they might nearly cancel each other out in other parts of the world, at the poles, the CO2 rules.
While it is possible that global warming isn't caused by humans, it is unlikely, simply because of how much pollutants we are pumping into the atmosphere--its going somewhere. My personal belief is that the warming is a lot worse than we think it is--its just that we've pumped enough sun-reflecting pollutants into the atmosphere that its almost negated the CO2, etc. Of course, the poles are still melting...
BTW, sorry for not getting any links for this--you can probably find them for yourself using google. A lot of this was also just a little analysis of mine, sort of to explain to the nonbelievers why the believers believe
Now yes I've had lots of programs crash. Anarchy Online has crashed 19 times in the past two days alone. But I've NEVER had Windows XP or 2000 crash. Ever. Out of probably thousands of bootups. Even my Windows 98 system was crash-free for over 3 years of solid use. Obviously if you're a noob using Windows you'll make the system crash all over from spyware, etc... but then again, if you're a noob in linux and click no/yes on all the wrong dialogues, you'll get the same :)