Trees are lovely things

Only a G.D. fool would operate ANY PC without a UPS. It ain't the A/C it's the brown-outs and surges that kill PC hardware.

Typical stupid headline from you.

BTB

Subject: bending uri

What exactly does the copyright cover - is the three seconds used in the clip exempt? Is that not bending the copyright law?

Wendy

Subject: Xbox 360 could beat PS3 in Folding

Ah. But, will 360 owners (myself included) be able up to put up with the constant jet-engine roar from the 360's fans?

My PS3 runs F@H most of the time, and is barely audible. I can't say the same for the 360 even when playing the less intensive games!!

Regards,

Baz

Subject: DRAM prices set to plummet

I live in Krakow, Poland, near the the Vistula and I can assure you the Vistula is rather narrow (~100m) and shallow (~2m).

Subject: blogsaywhat?

Doesn't anyone else find it rather ridiculous that someone will go on to tell other people they can make money by blogging but do it in the form of a book? It's a bit hypocitical, don't you think? "Sure, you can make a mad pile of cash off your blog, but only if you actually write a book and get a publisher."

P. Dotson

Subject: Apple top ten...

Sometimes, I think you guys just ask for it...

Mike

Subject: g80

it'll get funny when nvidia tries to squeeze a full g80 into a laptop. or even more ridiculously g80-sli. the thing will run from anywhere between 0 and an astonishing 30 minutes on battery.

maybe they will suply you with a handcart to pull after you to provide your portable with additional energy. they could even add solar panels und wind generators to the cart or even add water cooling to keep the case from melting. and if they're going that far, why not connect your "laptop" to your rooms heating? together with the solar/wind handcart that would be super-green!

but, aside from that, they can't do g80m. the can't, right?

The Riddling

Subject: Dubya Voters?

"Now you know where Dubya voters come from..."

Joe, surely Dubya voters think the rest of the world follows Texas Time (i.e. US CST). If aware of the rest of the world, of course...

Lindsay

Subject: fedex... 2... 3... no... 2 hours difference

seems no one is agreeing on the time difference. i think seeing half the people saying 2 hours and half saying 3 hours is even funnier then the fedex story was.

Hrznblack

Subject: Ageia

Ok, it's not nice to see one more firm trying to make the gaming PCs even more complicated, expensive and more prone to incompatibility.

Now they try to convince gamers that those uber-fast CPUs of today are not enough to solve some more math equations, since those so-called physics are nothing but numbers.

CPUs were always all about math, they alone can build any 3D scene that you can imagine with absolute life-like quality and precision if you simulate the light and colors as they work in real life (raytracing). But we still need GPUs because our processors don't have enough performance to do that in real time, yet. The GPUs are no more than CPUs with some specialized routines to achieve somewhat the same results with as less calculations as possible (still far from raytracing quality, though).

But I don't see the same for physics. Our little supercomputers of today can do some trigonometry while you print a document, listen MP3s and blast the hell out of some aliens.

Hopefully someday CPUs will be fast enough to render GPUs and the like all redundant, and once again we will care only about the cycles per second and memory capacity of our machines, like old times.

Mycelo

Subject: Spoon-bending psychic sued over Youtube boob

Funny. The clamation of skeptics is that by recreating an effect, they are directly determining the effect's original creation, and the intent of the original effect's creator.

In a simple breath of irony here, we see that mister randi and company making the clamation of debunkery is simultaneously assuming they are all-rightcheous in their so-called clamations of the other party, and have uncannily accurate information about the said target subject.

They'd have to be psychic to be able to bend the wills and minds of other people in order to be correct now, wouldn't they?

They're just like the MythBusters. They reproduce something to their liking and then say that "the whole thing was a hoax" or "it didn't happen". Personally, I think they should just stick to blowing things up with two tonnes of dynamite. That's the only thing they do best.

Miles Deighton

Subject: Geller

Very good journalism.

The Duke

Subject: Physics

NP writes: >How about an application for, say, real time >strategy? Easy- if you've got a tank battle >going on, the grass doesn't really live. And >the trees fall down. And a nuclear bomb >completely destroys the landscape.

Check out the open-source Total Annihilation clone 'Spring'. Not only is it a rather good RTS with excellent online play, it also features nifty map-altering physics. Oh yeah, it's also completely free.

Dan

Subject: DAAMIT

Do you guys have any idea when ATI intend to launch the X2600. I refuse to pay ridiculous prices for a 32 pipe pile of sh*t that is the NVIDIA 8600GT/GTS, I wish DAAMIT would be more vocal about what they are doing.

I didn't think that in buying ATI they would screw up it's entire operation.

J Curtis

Subject: Spoon-bending psychic sued over Youtube boob

Years ago uri geller was already 'exposed', and he publicly admitted it was all nonsense, then he waited a year or two and returned as if nothing ever happened, and it's a beautiful example of how this world works how everybody suddenly also forgot and he was back to the starting point, reminds you of politics doesn't it, people just accept what's told and what they are told to forget and change history with ease.

I have little hope for humanity.

(I wonder if the people that wrote the bible ever admitted it was all bollocks too.)

W.

Subject: All Ageia is showing is the capacity to put more objects on the screen

I am a long-time gamer as well. I like nice shadows and specular effects as much as anybody, but I care little for better graphics if the gameplay is lacking.

And for Cellfactor, I do not read that the gameplay is any better with the Ageia than without.

In short, I'm sorry but all Ageia is showing is the capacity to put more objects on the screen. I couldn't care less if the resultant trajectory of a crash is determined more finely with the card, what I want is a more realistic universe to play in.

So what realism are we talking about ? Well C4 is a common enough explosive is games, and in real life it is quite powerful. So how about giving us realistic explosion effects ? Not in the amount of smoke and flying bits, but in the resultant damage ? Think big stonking hole in a wall, or floor. And with enough holes, the whole building should come crashing down.

And trees. Trees are lovely things, and quite sturdy most of the time. In a fight between a car and a tree, the car loses most of the time and the tree stays in place, almost unscathed (well, except for the bark). But upgrade the car to a tank and it's the tree that loses - except in games. So when will Ageia allow us to clear the virtual forests and wreak havoc on nature as well as mankind ?

These are the two things lacking today to make for a more realistic environment, and those two things concern gameplay, not graphics. And there's another thing that bugs me, when are we going to break the 64-player barrier ? For the past five years I've played games where the max number of players was 64 players. In the past five years the available computing power has skyrocketed, but we still do not have 128-player environments. What gives ? Can Ageia do something about that ? If Ageia cannot do anything for all the above, then what's the point ?

Pascal