If it could play h.264 at 720p, and worked as well as XBMC, I'd buy a PS3 right now. *shrug*

I swear I read there was some XBMC-clone out for the PS3 and it was quite capable of playing 1080p video. I just looked again, and can't find any reference to it. Did I dream it? Weird... The closest thing I can find is MegaBox, which was apparently in the news in January 2008 and never mentioned again. It seems to have disappeared (or perhaps it was never real?).

The PS3 seems like the perfect platform for this app, I wonder why it hasn't been ported to it. There are similar apps already available. They're capable of playing 1080p video, and they can be used easily (just burn a DVD, no need to even install anything) and legally, with no hackery (like you have to do with the original XBMC). Those apps just aren't nearly as slick as Boxee, or even XBMC.

Hydrogen peroxide powered rocket packs fly for around 30 seconds, because they have a specific impulse of around 125, meaning that one pound of propellant can make 125 pound-seconds of thrust, meaning that it takes about two pounds of propellant for every second you are in the air. Mass ratios are low for anything strapped to a human, so the exponential nature of the rocket equation can be safely ignored.

A pretty hot (both literally and figuratively) bipropellant rocket could manage about twice the specific impulse, and you could carry somewhat heavier tanks, but two minutes of flight on a rocket pack is probably about the upper limit with conventional propellants.

However, an actual jet pack that used atmospheric oxygen could have an Isp ten times higher, allowing theoretical flights of fifteen minutes or so. Here, it really is a matter of technical development, since jet engines have thrust to weight ratios too low to make it practical. There is movement on this technical front, but it will still take a while.

John Carmack

My ATI 9800 Pro was nothing to it, barely ran, slowly, and very low framerate.

Odd, my 9800 Pro runs just fine on medium details at 1024x768 with very rare slowdowns. I have a subpar system otherwise too. Athlon XP 2000+, 1gig RAM. I do keep most of the other details down though, maybe that's your problem.