It may increase power, but in my opinion unless you're just looking for top end speed, the power benefits have to outweigh the weight benefits.. you'd probably be better off with a turbocharger/supercharger/nitrous kit if you want extra power? Or just buy a better car to begin with!
I used to dream about the mods I'd make to my car when I had the money, but now that I have money I realise it's better just to buy a decent car to begin with (I've still had the ECU remapped to increase turbo output, and I'm having a rear anti-sway bar installed, but I don't think I'll do more than that).
Well, I have a small car by american standards, but I wouldn't buy a Fiat or a Ka;) My car is the sister model of the Volkswagen Polo (which is about their second smallest car behind the insanely small Fox I think), it's a Skoda Fabia vRS (diesel).
Moving to smaller cars would be a good first step before making more efficient small cars, you're right. Except that European and Asian markets are already working towards making their cars more efficient anyway, so the cars are all there ready and waiting once the American market gets a beating with the clue stick (surprised it hasn't already what with all the whining about gas prices).
Indeed. My front wheel drive cars have actually handled better than my landrover defender in wet and icy conditions anyway just because there's less momentum to deal with (the landrover was crazy sometimes even at low speeds). I guess the poor weather handling could have been slightly improved with better tyres, but big trucks are not always the most apt vehicle depending on how often you get snow, how often the local council clears up the roads, and the inclines involved.
That's a fair point for those who need a truck. But in the case of people who don't need it, buying a more fuel efficient vehicle is still giving you the best gain (if you don't take into account the resources that have gone into creating the vehicles..).
Depends if it's RWD or 4x4.. I usually think of big dumb American trucks as RWD. I'd want a proper Landrover/Rangerover with low gear ratios, a buggy, or maybe even something like a Hummer to get up mountains.
I doubt she'd drive up to the top of mountains anyway. She'd use a lift like everyone else, otherwise she'd have to go back up for the car or get someone to deliver it back down. And if she does really crazy wilderness stuff may just get a helicopter ride out rather than drive!
Hmm I spose so. Well what about swappable batteries? You could just sign up for a scheme where you swap your spent battery for ready charged batteries at a service station.
That would of course be quite the logistics challenge, getting the right amount of batteries for each location, and storing/charging them all. You're right, I missed it. Sorry for my idealism and slowness:D
That's fine if they're charging from the grid for the majority of the time rather than their onboard engine, and if they don't let charge go to waste (perhaps feed it back into the grid if you know you're not going to use the car for a while), but in that case it would still be more efficient to get rid of the petrol engine completely.
Electric only vehicles would of course currently be impractical for anything but short to medium range commuting until a publicly available automobile charging infrastructure is made available (no, the grid doesn't count unless you like going up to strangers and asking to use their power outlets). Adding charging points to gas stations shouldn't be a big job technically, the only problem is politics and the lucrative oil business..
Sorry to put this bluntly, but you're wrong about poker or games involving dice. It is still just a search space, just one with odds. With enough time, a computer will be able to "solve" games with luck as easily as complete games.
You don't really understand poker then. All the world's top players understand the odds and statistics involved, so it still comes down to bluffing. Playing the odds may have you win against amateurs, but real pros are able to do more than just play the odds (though that comes into it as well, obviously).
With dice games, it would depend on the game. With snakes and ladders, there is no AI needed, you just move forward however many are on the dice, but for games like Warcraft say, you can still use tactics to play well even if you get poor movement rolls or whatever.
You can continue to be as blunt as you like, I think you're wrong about poker;) For some variants you can build up a fairly complete knowledge of where all cards in the deck are, but for 2 card stud with a shuffled deck against pros, it is a very challenging problem.
I went out with the most intelligent woman I know (well, AFAIK she is, she won a prize for having the best grades in her tr-state area in Canada), the main problem is she was plenty intelligent, but just not interested in the physical aspects of a relationship. That sucked. I have been pining after her for a couple of years but it's getting to the stage where I've managed not to try to speak to her for like 8 months maybe?:P
I'm not sure if I'll ever find another woman as intelligent as her who actually likes me in the same way (this woman wanted to marry me for some reason, despite not being interested in that idea before she met me - she seriously considered herself asexual). She was intelligent with school type stuff, but she could still be pretty illogical on occasion. I guess that's just woman for ya!
Or, someone who thinks it's pointless to start with a friggin truck if you're trying to be fuel efficient..?
Think of all the excess weight in a truck that she just doesn't need (and then she goes and makes it heavier with extra motors and batteries).
And as I'm sure others will point out, she's just shifting the emissions to a power plant, which may end up being worse than burning fuel in her car depending on the fuel the plant uses, and the amount of leakage she gets from her batteries and so on. Unless she just charges the batteries from the engine all the time, which to me would again seem more inefficient than just using the engine unless she's stopped in traffic a lot.
I do like the idea of electric vehicles btw, I just think a standard truck is a dumb place to start. Though the Ford F150 was the best selling vehicle in the US for 23 years, so in a way trucks are a good place to start - but not with current models IMO. They would need to make them lightweight (but still strong, obviously) to get the best efficiency. Electric motors have good torque too so they'd be good for hauling, as long as they have enough charge..
Sinister voice of Simons will be returning to announce ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKS !
Isn't that basically what most RPG games do? Unlock levels or upgrade equipment. The unlocks in more recent games have often been the things that kept me interested. Recently I replayed "Uncharted!" on a couple of difficulty modes just to get all the unlocks, and I basically never replay single player games. Unfortunately with Battlefield Bad Company I got to level 25 (which means most unlocked weapons) and I've never loaded it again for some reason.
I'm used to multiplayer games being about the fun experience of playing rather than rewards. Single player games usually can't offer the same experience as the AI is often dumb and repetitive, so they're all about set challenges through different levels, whereas multiplayer games mean that you could stay on the same map for days and still have fun, because the team and/or enemy AI is what makes it interesting.
A cooperative version of Deus Ex would be amazing, I'd probably take a holiday just to play it through with my brother.
I think most people feel that way about it tbh. My little bro used to restart it all the time (before he'd even got to the end, which was the part I didn't understand, tho he did complete it too obviously). I was totally psyched for it, love the demo, and for some reason started playing through on Realistic difficulty when we got the full game. I spent a lot of time dying and loading up again, especially when it came to those crazy rocket launching robot dudes (or perhaps I was launching the rockets, can't remember that much about it now). I remember one time where I had almost no health and had to keep retrying and retrying the escape from the restaurant. Anyway, then my dad overwrote my save game and after spending weeks getting to where I was, I really didn't want to go through it all again unfortunately. I probably shouldn't have started off on Realistic, but I'm the sort of person who plays a game once and doesn't do so again* because they already remember everything. I understand that Deus Ex has multiple plot lines though. It's been enough years that I'd probably enjoy it again now, but I still don't think I'd go for Realistic mode to start with. I get far too tense (basically you can be killed with one shot most of the time). You should have seen me when I was playing Operation Flashpoint, sneaking around everywhere. Only after or near completion of the game did I realise you could actually crawl right under the enemies' noses and get away with it basically, the AI wasn't very realistic at all! As someone alluded above, the AI in Deus Ex was pretty dumb too.
*actually with "Uncharted!" on the PS3 recently I went through it on all difficulty modes just because there was a 'medal' system where you unlocked rewards for accomplishing challenges like killing 3 enemies with one explosion, etc and I found that interesting, so I completed the first 3 dificulties before lending it to a friend. I don't recall replaying any other single player games like that, but I can spend months/years playing multiplayer games like Counter-Strike.
My photos are still up on my Kermon account btw. I'm still pretty proud of them really. They're mostly just really random, but I like just taking pictures of 'stuff' that I think looks nice. Not really done much stuff with people in it though - most people just take photos to record memories, I've never really done that.
It's actually a 30D, but there's no way I'm selling it, it should be decent quality for quite a few years to come at least. Perhaps will lend it to my sister if she has problems with her 400D or whatever she has, she's studying photography at college this year. I only have one decent prime lens and a mediocre zoom lens so far, was going to buy a better zoom that cost more than the camera, but until I start using the camera regularly that would be a total waste! When I was taking photos regularly I did everything with a Sony Cybershot W1 - it took great pictures but I still wanted something with more aperture control and so on (I did was a couple of courses in high school with some old black and white SLRs, and I kinda hankered after the control we got with those, though I love the immediate results you get with digital).
My deviantart id was Kermon (a lot of my photos are still up there) but my account got banned when I created a different account to speak to my Canadian ex (who came over here for 5 months to be with me but then we had a pretty nasty breakup) after she blocked me, as it's against the terms of service. I could get around the block easy enough and start another account for photos, but I think it's best to just keep myself away from there for a while, maybe forever, because it's not a nice reminder (we met through deviantArt). That's part of the reason I haven't started doing photography properly again, I don't know anywhere as good as dA for uploading art, getting comments on it (and favourites - they're addictive:s ).
I like your crazy psychedelic styles, and the chalk stuff is impressive to me since I've not drawn anything since early high school. I never studied art, so I always think I'm no good giving actual critique. I don't envy you having to look at a topless old lady anyway! Eww.
I never explicitly 'learned' C++. I learned a lot of C from a book, but the template code for the bots I wrote (just a bunch of DLL hooks to get it connected into the game, but you had to do the AI yourself) was in C++ so I just kind of picked it up as I went along. I still wouldn't know the syntax for creating a class for example, but I just look that kind of thing up when I need to... I've used a few different languages in my time, ranging from BASICs on the Amiga, to C and C++, Delphi (Pascal), JavaScript, PHP, Perl.. it's all the same stuff (apart from when we did functional languages at University, they're pretty crazy:) ). I don't think it's sad that you haven't learned different languages yet, sounds like you've done a good variety of projects at least. I've never done any proper cryptography or anything (read a little about it but never done any practical stuff). Classes and stuff shouldn't be that much of a big deal. Well I say that, but I probably still don't think enough in object oriented terms when coding, as I started off using languages that just didn't have a notion of objects. I think I've got the ideas down okay though. It was interesting looking through stuff like the Half Life and Quake III SDKs because then you see how each entity (like the players and enemies, and even just weapon pickups and the like) in the game is derived from a common class, so they all have 'die' routines and so on. That's a fun way of seeing object oriented coding in practice. It may be a bit weird getting used to have to use different variable types, and pointers though. I remember pointers were one of the weirdest concepts to get my head around in programming, but once you get the idea it's great, they let you do a lot. I'd recommend a good book for you to learn C++ but I don't really know any, sorry! This site looks pretty good to start with though.
I do believe you, it's my fault: I'd managed to get confused and thought you were comparing to the Citroen C6 because this guy is french, and the main story is about a Citroen:s
Ah sorry, I did notice the guy saying something about one american car being good, but remembered it as the Z06 rather than the C6 (didn't know the Z06 was a type of C6, but I remember reading the Z06 was the first decent handling car to come out of the US). Since he is french I ended up thinking of the Citroen C6. My bad:p
Ah. The blow up doll is not something I often think about, so I often don't get jokes heading in that direction until puncture repair kits are mentioned..
He's not on crack. You are missing the fact that the C6 will have a completely different engine range for the US - or is there just one engine for the US version as you seem to be suggesting?
The largest engine you can get in a C6 here in the UK - and therefore likely to be same for the rest of Europe - is a 3 litre V6, which has 215HP (you're probably giggling around now, right?). So the 730i would indeed be the more accurate comparison.
Concepts are renders and at best life-size fiberglass models.
Several companies make working concept cars. Some concepts are just models like you say, but 'at best' the concepts are actually fully working race cars - see the Mazda Furai if you don't believe me;) That video is worth watching just to hear the crazy rotary engine!
There are all kinds of companies that hand-build custom cars on top of existing chassis, but they are rarely a wild departure from the original design and usually cost several hundred thousand above and beyond the original price of the vehicle.
Or, you could just design a kit yourself and probably get the panels made out of plastic/fibre-glass/wood/whatever for a few thousand.. if you're just interested in the looks at least.
That race combo thing doesn't sound any better than the Logitech G25? Yes, I have one and a PS3. Works great using a Soundrocker chair as a driving seat:)
GT5 is pretty challenging in 'professional' physics mode - there's a lot less grip than the standard physics. I wouldn't say everything about the pro mode is completely realistic though; the Elises I bought in game both oversteer far too readily (the Elise actually tends to understeer at the limit in real life, from what I've seen and heard on Top Gear, etc).
Fully agree with you about real driving though. Unfortunately there is only one decent race track in the whole of Scotland (Knockhill), and I've yet to organise a trip to it. I was seriously interested in getting into go-kart racing over summer after having a go on a 390cc kart at an outdoor course in France, but I couldn't find any local clubs back here:/ Perhaps there are some and they just don't have an online presence..
How fast could you drive one across Japan [bbc.co.uk]?
Probably just as fast, if not faster than Jeremy Clarkson! As long as I knew there were no police around though. That guy has no shame, and I think something like 17 unpaid speeding tickets in Nevada. I've only ever been caught speeding one time, but ended up with a 3 month driving ban for it because of the speeds involved..
It was sad, but funny too when Jeremy put his neck out driving the GT-R around a test track:) I mean he tends to do a lot of powersliding so he must have developed half-decent neck muscles by now, but I guess he's just getting old.. either that or the GT-R really is a uniquely insane experience when it comes to controllable powersliding.
Well yep, that's a lot of branches, but how many of those end up in the same state, or a very similar state to another? When you consider that there will be many similar patterns on a chess board, you could probably compress the amount of space required to store all the game states quite significantly.
Where does 10^123 come from anyway, is that including every combination of upgrading pawns? Considering that pawns can be upgraded to several different types of piece then that adds even more complexity beyond the basic starting pieces. Then again you have to consider that there will be a lot of states that just wouldn't be possible because the king would have to go into checkmate in the process of getting to that state etc. It may have been rash to say that there can be a database with all the game states, but I'm still not sure. I guess I wasn't taking the actual links between states into account though.
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It may increase power, but in my opinion unless you're just looking for top end speed, the power benefits have to outweigh the weight benefits.. you'd probably be better off with a turbocharger/supercharger/nitrous kit if you want extra power? Or just buy a better car to begin with!
I used to dream about the mods I'd make to my car when I had the money, but now that I have money I realise it's better just to buy a decent car to begin with (I've still had the ECU remapped to increase turbo output, and I'm having a rear anti-sway bar installed, but I don't think I'll do more than that).
Well, I have a small car by american standards, but I wouldn't buy a Fiat or a Ka ;) My car is the sister model of the Volkswagen Polo (which is about their second smallest car behind the insanely small Fox I think), it's a Skoda Fabia vRS (diesel).
Moving to smaller cars would be a good first step before making more efficient small cars, you're right. Except that European and Asian markets are already working towards making their cars more efficient anyway, so the cars are all there ready and waiting once the American market gets a beating with the clue stick (surprised it hasn't already what with all the whining about gas prices).
Indeed. My front wheel drive cars have actually handled better than my landrover defender in wet and icy conditions anyway just because there's less momentum to deal with (the landrover was crazy sometimes even at low speeds). I guess the poor weather handling could have been slightly improved with better tyres, but big trucks are not always the most apt vehicle depending on how often you get snow, how often the local council clears up the roads, and the inclines involved.
That's a fair point for those who need a truck. But in the case of people who don't need it, buying a more fuel efficient vehicle is still giving you the best gain (if you don't take into account the resources that have gone into creating the vehicles..).
Depends if it's RWD or 4x4.. I usually think of big dumb American trucks as RWD. I'd want a proper Landrover/Rangerover with low gear ratios, a buggy, or maybe even something like a Hummer to get up mountains.
I doubt she'd drive up to the top of mountains anyway. She'd use a lift like everyone else, otherwise she'd have to go back up for the car or get someone to deliver it back down. And if she does really crazy wilderness stuff may just get a helicopter ride out rather than drive!
Hmm I spose so. Well what about swappable batteries? You could just sign up for a scheme where you swap your spent battery for ready charged batteries at a service station.
That would of course be quite the logistics challenge, getting the right amount of batteries for each location, and storing/charging them all. You're right, I missed it. Sorry for my idealism and slowness :D
That's fine if they're charging from the grid for the majority of the time rather than their onboard engine, and if they don't let charge go to waste (perhaps feed it back into the grid if you know you're not going to use the car for a while), but in that case it would still be more efficient to get rid of the petrol engine completely.
Electric only vehicles would of course currently be impractical for anything but short to medium range commuting until a publicly available automobile charging infrastructure is made available (no, the grid doesn't count unless you like going up to strangers and asking to use their power outlets). Adding charging points to gas stations shouldn't be a big job technically, the only problem is politics and the lucrative oil business..
Ignorant comments like these make me sad. And too depressed to rebuke you with facts that are available to anyone not illiterate.
Quit complaining if you aren't going to help the ignorant then, Mr Troll.
Sorry to put this bluntly, but you're wrong about poker or games involving dice. It is still just a search space, just one with odds. With enough time, a computer will be able to "solve" games with luck as easily as complete games.
You don't really understand poker then. All the world's top players understand the odds and statistics involved, so it still comes down to bluffing. Playing the odds may have you win against amateurs, but real pros are able to do more than just play the odds (though that comes into it as well, obviously).
With dice games, it would depend on the game. With snakes and ladders, there is no AI needed, you just move forward however many are on the dice, but for games like Warcraft say, you can still use tactics to play well even if you get poor movement rolls or whatever.
You can continue to be as blunt as you like, I think you're wrong about poker ;) For some variants you can build up a fairly complete knowledge of where all cards in the deck are, but for 2 card stud with a shuffled deck against pros, it is a very challenging problem.
I went out with the most intelligent woman I know (well, AFAIK she is, she won a prize for having the best grades in her tr-state area in Canada), the main problem is she was plenty intelligent, but just not interested in the physical aspects of a relationship. That sucked. I have been pining after her for a couple of years but it's getting to the stage where I've managed not to try to speak to her for like 8 months maybe? :P
I'm not sure if I'll ever find another woman as intelligent as her who actually likes me in the same way (this woman wanted to marry me for some reason, despite not being interested in that idea before she met me - she seriously considered herself asexual). She was intelligent with school type stuff, but she could still be pretty illogical on occasion. I guess that's just woman for ya!
Or, someone who thinks it's pointless to start with a friggin truck if you're trying to be fuel efficient..?
Think of all the excess weight in a truck that she just doesn't need (and then she goes and makes it heavier with extra motors and batteries).
And as I'm sure others will point out, she's just shifting the emissions to a power plant, which may end up being worse than burning fuel in her car depending on the fuel the plant uses, and the amount of leakage she gets from her batteries and so on. Unless she just charges the batteries from the engine all the time, which to me would again seem more inefficient than just using the engine unless she's stopped in traffic a lot.
I do like the idea of electric vehicles btw, I just think a standard truck is a dumb place to start. Though the Ford F150 was the best selling vehicle in the US for 23 years, so in a way trucks are a good place to start - but not with current models IMO. They would need to make them lightweight (but still strong, obviously) to get the best efficiency. Electric motors have good torque too so they'd be good for hauling, as long as they have enough charge..
Sinister voice of Simons will be returning to announce ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKS !
Isn't that basically what most RPG games do? Unlock levels or upgrade equipment. The unlocks in more recent games have often been the things that kept me interested. Recently I replayed "Uncharted!" on a couple of difficulty modes just to get all the unlocks, and I basically never replay single player games. Unfortunately with Battlefield Bad Company I got to level 25 (which means most unlocked weapons) and I've never loaded it again for some reason.
I'm used to multiplayer games being about the fun experience of playing rather than rewards. Single player games usually can't offer the same experience as the AI is often dumb and repetitive, so they're all about set challenges through different levels, whereas multiplayer games mean that you could stay on the same map for days and still have fun, because the team and/or enemy AI is what makes it interesting.
A cooperative version of Deus Ex would be amazing, I'd probably take a holiday just to play it through with my brother.
I think most people feel that way about it tbh. My little bro used to restart it all the time (before he'd even got to the end, which was the part I didn't understand, tho he did complete it too obviously). I was totally psyched for it, love the demo, and for some reason started playing through on Realistic difficulty when we got the full game. I spent a lot of time dying and loading up again, especially when it came to those crazy rocket launching robot dudes (or perhaps I was launching the rockets, can't remember that much about it now). I remember one time where I had almost no health and had to keep retrying and retrying the escape from the restaurant. Anyway, then my dad overwrote my save game and after spending weeks getting to where I was, I really didn't want to go through it all again unfortunately. I probably shouldn't have started off on Realistic, but I'm the sort of person who plays a game once and doesn't do so again* because they already remember everything. I understand that Deus Ex has multiple plot lines though. It's been enough years that I'd probably enjoy it again now, but I still don't think I'd go for Realistic mode to start with. I get far too tense (basically you can be killed with one shot most of the time). You should have seen me when I was playing Operation Flashpoint, sneaking around everywhere. Only after or near completion of the game did I realise you could actually crawl right under the enemies' noses and get away with it basically, the AI wasn't very realistic at all! As someone alluded above, the AI in Deus Ex was pretty dumb too.
*actually with "Uncharted!" on the PS3 recently I went through it on all difficulty modes just because there was a 'medal' system where you unlocked rewards for accomplishing challenges like killing 3 enemies with one explosion, etc and I found that interesting, so I completed the first 3 dificulties before lending it to a friend. I don't recall replaying any other single player games like that, but I can spend months/years playing multiplayer games like Counter-Strike.
My photos are still up on my Kermon account btw. I'm still pretty proud of them really. They're mostly just really random, but I like just taking pictures of 'stuff' that I think looks nice. Not really done much stuff with people in it though - most people just take photos to record memories, I've never really done that.
It's actually a 30D, but there's no way I'm selling it, it should be decent quality for quite a few years to come at least. Perhaps will lend it to my sister if she has problems with her 400D or whatever she has, she's studying photography at college this year. I only have one decent prime lens and a mediocre zoom lens so far, was going to buy a better zoom that cost more than the camera, but until I start using the camera regularly that would be a total waste! When I was taking photos regularly I did everything with a Sony Cybershot W1 - it took great pictures but I still wanted something with more aperture control and so on (I did was a couple of courses in high school with some old black and white SLRs, and I kinda hankered after the control we got with those, though I love the immediate results you get with digital).
My deviantart id was Kermon (a lot of my photos are still up there) but my account got banned when I created a different account to speak to my Canadian ex (who came over here for 5 months to be with me but then we had a pretty nasty breakup) after she blocked me, as it's against the terms of service. I could get around the block easy enough and start another account for photos, but I think it's best to just keep myself away from there for a while, maybe forever, because it's not a nice reminder (we met through deviantArt). That's part of the reason I haven't started doing photography properly again, I don't know anywhere as good as dA for uploading art, getting comments on it (and favourites - they're addictive :s ).
I like your crazy psychedelic styles, and the chalk stuff is impressive to me since I've not drawn anything since early high school. I never studied art, so I always think I'm no good giving actual critique. I don't envy you having to look at a topless old lady anyway! Eww.
I never explicitly 'learned' C++. I learned a lot of C from a book, but the template code for the bots I wrote (just a bunch of DLL hooks to get it connected into the game, but you had to do the AI yourself) was in C++ so I just kind of picked it up as I went along. I still wouldn't know the syntax for creating a class for example, but I just look that kind of thing up when I need to... I've used a few different languages in my time, ranging from BASICs on the Amiga, to C and C++, Delphi (Pascal), JavaScript, PHP, Perl.. it's all the same stuff (apart from when we did functional languages at University, they're pretty crazy :) ). I don't think it's sad that you haven't learned different languages yet, sounds like you've done a good variety of projects at least. I've never done any proper cryptography or anything (read a little about it but never done any practical stuff). Classes and stuff shouldn't be that much of a big deal. Well I say that, but I probably still don't think enough in object oriented terms when coding, as I started off using languages that just didn't have a notion of objects. I think I've got the ideas down okay though. It was interesting looking through stuff like the Half Life and Quake III SDKs because then you see how each entity (like the players and enemies, and even just weapon pickups and the like) in the game is derived from a common class, so they all have 'die' routines and so on. That's a fun way of seeing object oriented coding in practice. It may be a bit weird getting used to have to use different variable types, and pointers though. I remember pointers were one of the weirdest concepts to get my head around in programming, but once you get the idea it's great, they let you do a lot. I'd recommend a good book for you to learn C++ but I don't really know any, sorry! This site looks pretty good to start with though.
I do believe you, it's my fault: I'd managed to get confused and thought you were comparing to the Citroen C6 because this guy is french, and the main story is about a Citroen :s
Ah sorry, I did notice the guy saying something about one american car being good, but remembered it as the Z06 rather than the C6 (didn't know the Z06 was a type of C6, but I remember reading the Z06 was the first decent handling car to come out of the US). Since he is french I ended up thinking of the Citroen C6. My bad :p
Ah. The blow up doll is not something I often think about, so I often don't get jokes heading in that direction until puncture repair kits are mentioned..
He's not on crack. You are missing the fact that the C6 will have a completely different engine range for the US - or is there just one engine for the US version as you seem to be suggesting?
The largest engine you can get in a C6 here in the UK - and therefore likely to be same for the rest of Europe - is a 3 litre V6, which has 215HP (you're probably giggling around now, right?). So the 730i would indeed be the more accurate comparison.
Concepts are renders and at best life-size fiberglass models.
Several companies make working concept cars. Some concepts are just models like you say, but 'at best' the concepts are actually fully working race cars - see the Mazda Furai if you don't believe me ;) That video is worth watching just to hear the crazy rotary engine!
There are all kinds of companies that hand-build custom cars on top of existing chassis, but they are rarely a wild departure from the original design and usually cost several hundred thousand above and beyond the original price of the vehicle.
Or, you could just design a kit yourself and probably get the panels made out of plastic/fibre-glass/wood/whatever for a few thousand.. if you're just interested in the looks at least.
That race combo thing doesn't sound any better than the Logitech G25? Yes, I have one and a PS3. Works great using a Soundrocker chair as a driving seat :)
GT5 is pretty challenging in 'professional' physics mode - there's a lot less grip than the standard physics. I wouldn't say everything about the pro mode is completely realistic though; the Elises I bought in game both oversteer far too readily (the Elise actually tends to understeer at the limit in real life, from what I've seen and heard on Top Gear, etc).
Fully agree with you about real driving though. Unfortunately there is only one decent race track in the whole of Scotland (Knockhill), and I've yet to organise a trip to it. I was seriously interested in getting into go-kart racing over summer after having a go on a 390cc kart at an outdoor course in France, but I couldn't find any local clubs back here :/ Perhaps there are some and they just don't have an online presence..
How fast could you drive one across Japan [bbc.co.uk]?
Probably just as fast, if not faster than Jeremy Clarkson! As long as I knew there were no police around though. That guy has no shame, and I think something like 17 unpaid speeding tickets in Nevada. I've only ever been caught speeding one time, but ended up with a 3 month driving ban for it because of the speeds involved..
It was sad, but funny too when Jeremy put his neck out driving the GT-R around a test track :) I mean he tends to do a lot of powersliding so he must have developed half-decent neck muscles by now, but I guess he's just getting old.. either that or the GT-R really is a uniquely insane experience when it comes to controllable powersliding.
nobody is this stupid
How much do you want to bet?
Well yep, that's a lot of branches, but how many of those end up in the same state, or a very similar state to another? When you consider that there will be many similar patterns on a chess board, you could probably compress the amount of space required to store all the game states quite significantly.
Where does 10^123 come from anyway, is that including every combination of upgrading pawns? Considering that pawns can be upgraded to several different types of piece then that adds even more complexity beyond the basic starting pieces. Then again you have to consider that there will be a lot of states that just wouldn't be possible because the king would have to go into checkmate in the process of getting to that state etc. It may have been rash to say that there can be a database with all the game states, but I'm still not sure. I guess I wasn't taking the actual links between states into account though.