Might not be as useful without pictures, though.

True. But if the original poster had supplied a bunch of config and log files, I'll bet there would be a bunch of people here providing more relevant technical solutions. Unfortunately, performance questions that seem very general often have very case-specific answers.

Are you aware that NVIDIA's Cg stands for "C for graphics"? Also, CUDA "uses a recursion-free, function-pointer-free subset of the C language, plus some simple extensions."

Think about what languages these GPUs are programmed in (CUDA, Cg, GLSL, etc.), and what language do these languages in turn try to mimic? Oh yeah, C. :-P

When my workplace "upgraded" to Office 2007, performance became abysmal. Powerpoint is now awful, and Excel is slow, too. Navigating slides is now an exercise in patience. (The performance of Vista, now available on XP!) Any word on whether Office 2010 can bring back reasonable performance?

Sure they could have. And they didn't. But all interested slashdot nerds now know the magic incantations to set the bitrate. Enjoy.

I just tried it yesterday. It seems to work fine. No fast-forward/reverse, but forward/backward selection from an image preview stack works well enough for me (for now). It does seem like the default auto-bitrate tends to set things on the low side. Try control-shift-alt-b to manually select from the three available bitrates, and control-shift-alt-m for a menu of other interesting stuff.

As a general rule of thumb, if an envelope says "Important" on it, it can go right in the trash. One exception is tax documents from a known source.

I guess you've never had to visit the ER.

Looks nice, but I still don't understand the common misspelling of "Ctrl" as "Caps Lock".

#ifdef I_LIKE_REALLY_LONG_DESCRIPTIVE_NAMES
#define USE_THE_CAPS_LOCK_KEY_TO_MAKE_IT_HAPPEN
#endif // I_LIKE_REALLY_LONG_DESCRIPTIVE_NAMES

Okay, not really. I actually typed the above with my pinky fingers on the Shift keys (my Caps Lock and Ctrl keys are both mapped to Ctrl).

What?! A whole thread devoted to nethack, and no mention yet of Rob Balder's NetHack song?

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