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Comment Re:Trailer Doesn't Mean Shit (Score 2) 71

All of what you see and hear in the trailer is actual gameplay. The game is a giant sandbox that lets you switch between creatures and objects at massively different scales, from fundamental particles to large constructs of the universe... all while reading tidbits of existential text, markov chains, and finding clips of Alan Watts recordings to listen to. Every object you "become" also gets added to a library where you can read more information about it.

It's certainly not going to appeal to everyone, but it's fun for what it is trying to do and show you. And it's not, as one comment said a "VRML demo for $60", it's a simple $15 sandbox that tries to make you think.

Comment Re:Corn and other grains (Score 3, Insightful) 740

Selective breeding is a lot more predictable than directly twiddling genes. There are a lot of unforeseen side-effects.

[citation needed]

Bill Nye would disagree with you. Specifically, here is a quote from when he changed his mind about GMO's:

"The thing is, genetically modified food has no effect on us. That is to say, there is no difference between it and organically raised food. This is scientifically provable. It’s certainly provable to my satisfaction, and that’s the most straightforward thing about it, to see if it’s still nutritious and see if it has any allergic effect, and it absolutely does not. In fact, in general, all of these foods are more nutritious."

Source: http://ecowatch.com/2015/07/14...

There's further details in his recent book Undeniable about why there aren't "unforeseen side-effects" from GMO foods. I think anyone with doubts or curiosity about the subject (and evolution in general) should read it.

Comment Re:The good news (Score 1) 700

To be fair, your AMD analogy would only work if AMD printed "Intel Pentium MMX" on their K6s, and they were packaged in the same PPGA package as a real Pentium MMX.

The chips that FTDI is disabling really are counterfeit - they look identical on the outside to a real FTDI chip, it's not just matching FTDI's VID/PID to use the same drivers.

ISS

Space Station Spacewalkers Stymied By Stubborn Bolt 290

Hugh Pickens writes "Reuters reports that astronauts at the International Space Station ran into problems after removing the station's 100-kg power-switching unit, one of four used in a system that distributes electrical power generated by the station's solar array wings, and were stymied after repeated attempts to attach the new device failed when a bolt jammed, preventing astronauts from hooking it up into the station's power grid. Japanese Astronaut Akihiko Hoshide got the bolt to turn nine times but engineers need 15 turns to secure the power-switching unit. 'We're kind of at a loss of what else we can try,' said astronaut Jack Fischer at NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston after more than an hour of trouble-shooting. 'If you guys have any thoughts or ideas or brilliant schemes on what we can do, let us know.' Hoshide suggested using a tool that provides more force on bolts, but NASA engineers are reluctant to try anything that could make the situation worse and as the spacewalk slipped past seven hours, flight controllers told the astronauts to tether the unit in place, clean up their tools and head back into the station's airlock. NASA officials says the failure to secure the new unit won't disrupt station operations but it will force engineers to carefully distribute electrical power from three operating units to various station systems and says another attempt to install the power distributor could come as early as next week if engineers can figure out what to do with the stubborn bolt. 'We're going to figure it out another day,' says Fischer."

Comment Re:This was incidentally the machine (Score 1) 780

My frankenpad began as a T60p (15.0" 4:3, by the way, I forgot to mention that), with just the LCD swap, maxed out RAM, and a 2 GHz Core Duo, and I stuck with Windows 7 on that build (my experience on OS X being subpar, having used it extensively on an iBook G4, and being frustrated with the speed).

Then after a while, things were failing, the chassis was damaged, and I was getting sick of the RAM limitations, so I got a nice refurb T60 15.0" 4:3 cheaply, ripped out all the T60 bits, put T61p bits in (which is what required filing part of the chassis away), swapped my LCD over, and ran with it for a while.

Then, the screen started failing right before the MBPR was announced, so I jumped ship to OS X, and I'm liking it now that I have a fast machine.

Comment Re:Linux on Mac?! (Score 2) 780

It's not your only choice, it's just your only choice that's currently available.

Plenty of 1920x1200 options if you go back to Core 2, a few at Nehalem, and a couple at Sandy Bridge. (Some of those in the Core 2 and Nehalem days are even 15".)

Also, if you go back to Core 2, and don't mind some frankensteining, you can get an IDTech IAQX10, IAQX10N, or IAQX10S panel, a ThinkPad T60 or T60p, and a T61p 14.1" 4:3 motherboard, heatsink, Socket P CPU, and PCMCIA slot assembly, and put them all together. Need to reflash the panel's EDID ROM, and file some stuff away from the chassis, but the end result is up to the following:

2048x1536 IPS display
2.6 GHz Core 2 Duo Penryn
Quadro FX 570M (but crippled, and 128 MiB VRAM only)
8 GiB RAM
Whatever SSD you want, but IIRC it's constrained to SATA 2 speeds (maybe SATA 1, actually)

With less frankensteining, you can run the T60p board, and get up to the following:

2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo Merom
FireGL V5250
3 GiB RAM
Whatever SSD you want at SATA 1 speeds

And, with zero frankensteining, you can find an ultra-rare config of the ThinkPad R50p, which means up to (I think):

1.7 GHz Pentium M
Radeon 9200 or so IIRC
I think 2 GiB RAM?
Whatever PATA SSD you can find

The T61p/T60p frankenstein is what I ran before getting a MacBook Pro Retina, I'm a bit of a pixel whore.

Comment Re:False (Score 1) 375

Of course, Bumpgate hit all the x86 business laptops with discrete graphics, too. ATI didn't have anything competitive performance-wise at the time, so everyone went with 8000 series Nvidia stuff.

Basically, 2007-2008 was a bad time to buy a new laptop with discrete graphics.

Comment Re:Ok... (Score 2) 180

Metal wheels on metal rail have significantly lower rolling resistance than rubber tires on asphalt or concrete, though. And, the infrastructure for rail is better suited to providing electricity to a train (partially because there's already metal to metal contact) than the infrastructure for roads.

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