(citation needed)

I have never seen RAM as cheap as it is now. When you can buy a 16GB ECC DIMM for less than $200, it is rather wonderful. Our researchers that use big amounts of memory are extremely happy with how much memory they can stuff in desktops and servers for a reasonably price.

Now I'll admit, I don't have a chart of RAM prices, so I suppose I could be wrong, but then I've worked in IT for the last, oh, 20ish years on a continuous basis and spec'ing and buying hardware is a fairly common part of my job.

So please, show me some evidence from two years ago when RAM was half its current price. Right now I see a 16GB 1600MHz 2R ECC DIMM as running about $170, and a 4x4GB 1600MHz unbuffered set running about $150. So please show me some proof that two years ago I could get those for about $70-90 each.

Have you looked at RAM prices? 32GB of DDR3 RAM is about $300-400 for a 4x8GB set, depending on speed and company. So $600-800 for 64GB. Ok well how about server memory, since you can get servers with 6TB of RAM if you like (really, check HP or Dell). For a 16GB DIMM, which is the largest you can get before the price per GB skyrockets, it is about $160-200. fo $640-800 for 64GB.

So hmmm, looks like DDR4 is right in what other ram costs, plus a bit of a premium since it is brand new tech. What a shock! Who would have every thought it would cost about what RAM costs!

Get off it. Also it is stupid to act like everyone would need to buy the max amount of RAM. That the system SUPPORTS 64GB doesn't mean you have to BUY 64GB. It means that if you need that much, you can have it. If you need less, get less. Most desktops sold today support 32GB in the form of 4 sticks of 8GB DDR3 RAM. Most systems ship with only 4-8GB of RAM, in 1 or 2 sticks. There is nothing stopping you from using less.

You see this even more on the server market. We like Dell R720XDs at work. They support 768GB of RAM. However 0 out of 5 that we have purchased have that much RAM. It is exceedingly expensive, since it needs 32GB DIMMS. However it also means that getting 384GB is much cheaper, since it has the ability to do that on 16GB DIMMS. That said, we have only one system that needs that much RAM. The rest? Between 128-256GB. The rest of the slots sit empty, ready to be filled as our needs grow. Two of the 128GB servers will probably be getting more memory soon.

So seriously, get off it. DDR4 really isn't much more expensive than DDR3, much less than I thought, and memory is cheaper than ever. All these boards mean is if you need a lot of RAM, you can have it.

The thing is, religious texts say a lot of shit, particularly the major religions which often have a whole lot of text including not just their "official" book but all kinds of other documents that have some measure of authority in their belief system for various reasons. Also because the documents are old, and composed of various collected stories of various authorships, there are generally plenty of contradictions, things that have been shown to be untrue, and so on.

So what really happens is people choose to believe the parts they like, and ignore or reinterpret the rest. They follow the parts they wish and find justifications for not following the others. This happens all the time in all religions. Generally, religious ideology is an excuse, a justification, for a behaviour, not the case. People don't read a holy text and say "Oh, well I have to follow this to the letter!" Rather they have something they want to do and they find a way to make their belief system justify it.

You can see it with things like the "prosperity gospel" Christians and so on. Any even somewhat literal reading of Jesus's teachings shows the guy was the ultimate hippy. All about helping the poor, against material wealth, etc, etc. However, they find a way to justify their views in the bible.

Or the crazy things Orthodox Jews go through to supposedly obey arbitrary restrictions in the torah, while then skirting around them. Like they believe that the prohibition on making fire on the sabbath applies to electricity. However then there are things like ovens with timers greater than 24 hours, so you can have it come on automatically on the sabbath and that's ok. Oh Shabbos Goys, non-Jewish individuals you can hire to do things for you that you are not allowed to do on the sabbath.

Same shit with any of the variants of Islam. What the Koran says isn't really relevant. They'll find a way to make it justify what they want to believe. They can find a way to twist it to allow things that are specifically forbidden, or to ignore things that are required, or whatever.

The old technology I am giving up are the wringers on top of washing machines.

They're dangerous (you can get your fingers caught) and they mess up more delicate fabrics. Also, the newer washing machines with the agitators that churn the wash around do just as good a job.

Also, zippers. Velcro is much easier to work with and it never gets stuck and it doesn't hurt as much to snag your dick on velcro.

I'm not saying panic either. But I wouldn't blow them off. I would think that the biggest barrier they have is access to the equipment and materials to build what they want. They number in the tens of thousands at least, and we keep hearing how many were engineering grads or university students. They can't all be stupid. But sure another roadblock they will have are the throngs of stupid people they have lumped themselves in with. The thing is for biological warfare they don't even need weapons systems. They'll just infect a few hundred 'martyrs' and put them on a plane somewhere. Pneumonic plague (black death) doesn't need physical contact.

These aren't security experts FFS. Personally I wouldn't stop my life over this, but it is good to understand what some of them have in mind, and keep an eye on it.

Remember these guys are predisposed to killing themselves for the cause. We have to watch for things like getting themselves infected and travelling somewhere before symptoms show. They could weaponize themselves. As an example, look at how Ebola went to Nigeria and now some student sneaking into Senegal. Imagine if it was a whole bunch of nuts doing it on purpose. It's not something to just dismiss. Even if it didn't kill thousands, the panic caused in the general population who thanks to modern news organizations have no ability to filter or prioritize what they need to panic over. And western nations are too politically correct or have too much economic interest to test people at the borders or airports.

I'm not going to get bent about the whole thing, we should have already guessed guys like this have been trying to dream up ideas for years. But it shouldn't be discounted out of hand.

Yes, it's always better to be prepared after something very bad happens. Let's just ignore it for now.

3. We have antibiotics.

FTFY: We have antibiotics that we have rendered useless because we have fed them to cows to make them bigger which we then eat and so any germ we might encounter may already have evolved defences from said antibiotic.

FWIW, there are a lot of animals that can carry plague, not just rabbits (I know you implied that). But people don't know that most rodents in North America can carry it including squirrels, prairie dogs, rats, etc etc etc. And people still die from it occasionally.

Similar technology was used to look for undiscovered chambers in Egyptian pyramids in the 80's, if memory serves

Of course. Where do you think The Mummy came from?

I love science.

Dr Manhattan is unlikely to come into being from energetic mouons interacting with fissile reactor fuel rods.

I'm sure they said a spider-man was unlikely to come into being from being bitten by a radioactive spider, too. But guess what happened.

Either way, as someone who doesn't know from nothing, I'm completely in favor of bombarding nuclear rods with muons. Because I like saying "muons". "Muons...muons..." If you watch yourself in the mirror when you say "muon" your mouth makes a little kissyface. Fun!

Now please excuse me. This bottle of single-malt isn't going to drink itself.

I get the feeling there's a superhero origin story somewhere in all this "Let's bombard active nuclear fuel rods with muons and see what happens".

But if I'm trying to game on an old i5-750, wouldn't this be a good time to upgrade to one of the cheaper 4-core Haswells that are running 3.8mhz instead of 2.7? Maybe a Haswell i5 (I guess, I'd need a new mobo then, right?) And the latest PCI-E for a new graphics card.

I don't like to buy the newest and best, but when the second newest becomes cheap. I've got a really nice case, but I'm not sure if I could put a new processor into my old motherboard or if it would even be worth it.

I'd like to do something before the fall games come out. Would I be better off just upgrading my old Radeon HD6850 to a nvidia 760 or a Radeon R9 285 or something?

And did I fall through a wormhole and end up at Tom's Hardware?

What about living under high tension transmission lines? :)

Howard Stern told women to sit on subwoofers.

Unsure about the concept of monopolies and the pressures they can bring to bear suppressing competition are we?