Where did you find information on the USA's spending on weather forecasting? Is it really that much lower than that of the European countries?

People seem to see all the embarrassment behind the fact that the European weather forecasting system is so much better, but Europe consists of 50 countries with a total population of 750 million. I don't know how many of those countries put into that weather system funding pot, but I'll betcha its most of them.

The fact that our system, from one country with half the population, is comparable at all seems impressive to me. After all, we're being compared to a continent.

Have it. Love it. 1920x1200 is only a little more expensive than 1920x1080, which makes sense since its a little bit more pixels. Its really the highest resolution you can get at a decent price, unless you maybe count high end Apple monitors. But I refuse to buy a monitor with a fan in it.

Actually, he doesn't say where the server is located. It might be at his house! He's asking for a hole in the firewall to get to his server... He didn't say which way he needed to hole to go. I think that he wants to access an off-site server via the hospital WiFi.

Which makes his surprise about being asked for an account significantly less surprising.

I don't really get this. What, exactly, prevents the computer from downshifting the transmission, you know, automatically? Aren't they called Automatic transmissions for a reason?

My car (6 speed auto Ford) downshifts itself when descending hills when the Cruise Control is on to try and maintain speed. Of course, it doesn't work all that well because engine breaking usually isn't enough to keep a car slowed on a hill, and hitting the brake turns off the cruise...

Heck, my dad's diesel pickup (also Ford) doesn't even have to be in cruise control. Just hitting the brake is enough to cause it to downshift and engine brake.

That's 16 lanes coming directly out of the CPU; the chipset also provides an additional 8 lanes.

This means that in order to get data from a discrete GPU to a PCIe lightpeak card will require a journey from the GPU, through the CPU PCIe lanes, through the CPU, down whatever they're calling the Frontside Bus this week, into the Chipset's PCIe controller, down those lanes and into the lightpeak card. I don't know if that will affect performance much.

Of course, I doubt we'll see GPU support for Lightpeak monitor connections OR Lightpeak monitors for at least a year after Lightpeak itself comes out, so its unlikely to see use this CPU generation.

If GTA was really based off of this man's life, he wouldn't be suing Rockstar in the court of law. Rockstar's HQ would be full of bullet holes.

I used to use my Nokia 1100 as an Alarm clock, as I slept in the top bunk and I could toss it in between the bed rail and mattress. Thing is, though, is that while it would always go off at the time it was supposed to, it would randomly go off at other COMPLETELY RANDOM times. If I set it at 6:15, it might go off at 1:30 or 5:50 or anything, but it would always go off at 6:15 too. It would say "ALARM" and all that, and I'd go into the alarm clock setting to see when it was set, and it'd be set at 6:15... but it had just gone off at like 2:42.

Googling finds that the issue with my cell phone was isolated, though many complaints that it just won't go off...

I stopped trusting cell phones to wake me. I use a Chumby now.

The college I went to up until last year used nothing but Dells in all the computer labs. What a nightmare.

They all always seem to RUN, but they ALL have input device problems. We had these P3s in the one lab, and you'd get halfway through class and the keyboard and mice would fail on about half the machines. New mice and keyboards didn't help, and they locked up if you plugged most USB devices. All you could do is sit there and look at your inaccessible work.

The PIV and Core 2 Insipirons all had major USB port problems. For one thing, they pointed at the ground at a 45 degree angle, and only detected USB thumbdrives about half the time. Sometimes, plugging anything in would lead to an instant reboot.

The Core 2 Inspirons were the worst, because they didn't have have PS/2 ports. For some reason, unless you plugged the keyboard and mice into the top two slots on the motherboards, they didn't work. Even then, it usually took several reboots after unplugging them. It took us hours to get them all to work when we moved them to set up for a programming contest.

When someone comes into an IRC channel and moans about USB Port issues, I usually respond "What Model Dell?" The reply is usually Inspiron.

I had to repair a PIV Inspiron once, but I had to ask for the keyboard for it because none of the USB keyboards I had would work and it didn't have PS/2 ports. Its kind of embarrassing.

I'm thinking the BIOSes only give the drives a couple of seconds to respond with the CD information and sometimes the drive doesn't make it in time. I usually get around situations like the ones you've mentioned by warm booting a couple of times. Relatively speaking, optical drives frequently take an eternity to respond.

I'm suprised no-one has mentioned this, but Spore Creation files are PNGs with a picture of the creation, with the data needed to create it in the game hidden in the alpha channel. This scheme, obviously, just generates a blurry group of pixels, but I wonder if you could change it somehow so the png looks like its contents... Like text of what's in the .torrent.

You induce an interesting point... Maybe they're thinking of starting to charge for Bnet and are worried that VPN will eat their lunch...

Nah....

Then again...

As a purely coincidental side effect, I'm sure, this will make sure that everyone on the LAN has their own copy, as battle.net will only allow one CD key on at a time.

Quite a reversal of the "Ghost Copy" feature or whatever of StarCraft 1 that allows many people to use one copy over the LAN.

Then you clearly don't have any Mac Zealots where you work.

Yes, I personally know Mac Zealots. I took constant belittlement for nearly two years because I don't run MacOS. Every time you fired back with the slightest criticism of Apple's many many problems and flaws, he'd turn the color of a tomato and storm out of the room. He literally alienated himself from his friends after he bought an iMac. Sad.

And that was only one of them. Oh yes, they exist. On the Internet and in real life.

Apple, over the years, has really sought to promote this with their marketing campaigns and such. Ever notice they don't sell on their own features, but rather Windows' flaws?

That being said, being a Mac USER doesn't make you a Mac ZEALOT.

The limitation on a drag car's speed certainly isn't engine output - Its traction. Top Fuel dragsters ride the clutch (makes it slip) for the first few hundred feet to keep the wheels from breaking loose. The clutches are replaced every run. The 8,000 Hp isn't even needed till the car reaches 100Mph or so, when the wheel RPMs get up and wind downforce increases traction. And it is at this point when an electric motor starts to fall off - they make all their power early on, when it can't get to the ground on a top fuel engine.

In fact, dragsters have a knob on the top the engine to dial out a couple hundred horsepower if the crew thinks traction will be a problem.

These batteries may very well make electric racing cheaper and more viable, but I doubt they'll help speed much. Less weight = less traction, too.

Well, name one system that wasn't like that. Compare Launch titles for any console with the ones that came out late in its life.

On the SNES, compare Super Mario World to Yoshi's Island or, say, Chrono Trigger or even Tales of Phantasia.
On the PS1, Compare FF7 to FF9. HUGE difference.
On the N64, Goldeneye to Perfect Dark and such. (Granted, the Expansion pack helped, but I'm pointing out the real obvious ones).
On the PS2, compare Red Faction to FF12.

Even though they use higher level languages now, there's still plenty of room for improvement over the life of any console or system.