sonofsanta

What's grey and can't swim? A filing cabinet.

Good Lord, these people are a world apart aren't they? Zipporah Lisle-Mainwaring. I know you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover, but crikey, a name like that tells you everything about the area, doesn't it?

More than enough CPU, PSU & storage speed, and from that GPU a 770/960 would about double your framerates (and a 970 even more so) based on what I gained going from a 5770 -> 680. Get a 970 now and you're set for about another 4 years, I reckon. Intel CPUs have barely progressed since your i5, in performance terms anyway.

If you can stretch to the 970, stretch to the 970, it is by far the best performance/price card on the market. The 960 isn't quite such a bargain, relatively speaking, although if you do decide to stay sensible (as if!) the Asus Strix cards are brilliant so that 960's a good 'un. AMD drivers are fine, only problem I ever had was with Crossfire profiles for Witcher 2 on release, so don't CrossFire and wait for the Steam sale and you're fine but nVidia are just a better GPU at the moment - getting more performance for less power, i.e. less heat & noise. If you get a 960 or a 970, you also get the Witcher 3 for free when it's released, and goddamn if the Witcher games aren't amazing. Lookers as well.

I've not seen Interstellar yet (I know, I know) but from what I gather, that planet at the end is near a supermassive black hole. Gravity warps time in the same way that speed does - if you could orbit a black hole safely, time would pass relatively slower just as if you were travelling quickly. Regarding going back in time: theoretically, yes, and that may be part of why we can't go faster than light. You can't actually go at the speed of light - time would stop and the energy required is infinite - but the closer you get, you would age slower relative to people back home, yes. You'd still age normally as far as you're concerned - your frame of reference would be stationary - but if you returned home then millennia might have passed. You'd still be, relatively speaking, only 30 years old, but in absolute Earth terms you might be 4,000. Time is weird, though; most equations in physics don't actually need it, and why we experience time in the linear fashion we do (the arrow of time) is a rather embarassing mystery. @jinnantonnix will fill you in more there, I expect Don't forget our galactic position - any closer to the galactic core and there'd be too many cosmic rays scorching the planet, any further out and there wouldn't be enough heavy elements from supernovae. Our chances of existing are really really really really really really really really really really ridiculously slim.

Not for me, thanks. I'd rather not commit suicide repeatedly and hope that the reconstructed clone that comes out the other side continues to live my life in accordance with my moral principles. Plus, as @sted says, information is still bound by the speed of light. And the bandwidth requirements are horrendous.

"The them days"? Make sense, man!

All about that Fermi Paradox. Have we passed the Great Filter successfully—the first race ever to do so—or is it still in our future, waiting to destroy us? Or—more likely—waiting for us to destroy ourselves...

Just in case anyone else gets the same problem: after the update, the new CM Messaging app wasn't displaying contact names or photos, but listing everyone by number. The contacts were there, but they weren't linking. The fix is pretty easy though: Settings > Accounts > Google > [email protected] > Untick Contacts Sync Settings > Apps > All > Contacts > Clear Data (yes to the warning) Settings > Apps > All > Contacts Storage > Clear Data (yes to the warning) Settings > Accounts > Google > [email protected] > Re-tick Contacts Sync

No-one has ever suggested (well, reasonably and recently, at least) that there is or was intelligent life on Mars, but finding any life on Mars - just simple microbial stuff - would be huge, because at the moment the Earth is the only place we know of in the whole Universe where life has developed. If it's happened on the world just next door as well, suddenly it starts looking like life will be a lot more common - as in, it's on 2 out of 2 places we've studied in depth - and the chances of finding other intelligent life elsewhere go up massively. There has definitely been free-flowing water on Mars in the past, that's been shown before, but the interior of Mars cooled and set, the magnetic field disappeared, and the solar wind stripped the planet of atmosphere and moisture. This new discovery, though, is that thin films of water exist right now due to the very high concentration of salt lowering the freezing point of water to the point it can exist as a liquid. The concentration of salt is too high to support life as we know it, but given the situations and locations life manages to exist on this planet, I wouldn't be surprised if something has adapted to it. Liquid water is a much bigger step towards the possibility of life; said life being able to handle the conditions is almost a fine detail after that.

Just rebooting and optimising all my apps now

That is big news - congratulations, and enjoy!

Tell me about it. Just went away for a romantic weekend with the missus* to celebrate 7 years together, and while we were away we spent over £100 on stuff for the kids, £8 on my missus and £0 for me. I've had that Fisher guff arrive in the post to me before. Whatever data they're using for their marketing campaigns, they need to chuck it and start over. *an overnight stay in a Premier Inn. Hey big spender!

So you're working on big government NHS IT projects? Blimey - good luck to you with that one! It'll certainly be a challenge, I reckon

If you mean the EDIT conference, it's moving from May to October, as per the Queen's @Dos_Box's Christmas Message

I think the point is that they were protesting something that would have banned their right to assemble outside Parliament in this way (so like here, then), so they were being clever. And you can't argue that a gimmick like this is getting them more coverage than the standard approach - we don't hear about most UK protests, so we'd never have heard of a Spanish one otherwise.

Mortal Instruments: Ciy of Bones. The first half of it, at least. "Derivative" and "clichéd" don't quite cover it: * You, our teen protagonist, are special because of your bloodline! * There's a secret about who your father is - and you'll never guess! * Everyone is after you - watch out for demons, they could be anywhere! * The funny and gentle friend you've grown up with is in love with you, but you love the moody and mysterious new man in your life - oh noes love triangle! Absolutely YA by the numbers, didn't bother finishing it. Also recently watched Unthinkable with Samuel L Jackson as an army interrogator who has to get the location of three nukes in US cities from Michael Sheen's terrorist. Never really answers the questions it poses around how far can you go, is torture ever justified or reliable, is keeping the moral high ground important... but it's entertaining, chiefly because of the performances in it.

+1 for Windows Noob, it's how I built my SCCM 2012 server

I really enjoyed Human Revolution, and I'm a sucker for cyberpunk, so I'm really looking forward to this. "Coming Soon"™ for PC.

The only 39"-42" TVs with 4 x HDMI ports I can find are these two: Sony BRAVIA KDL42W706B Silver | 42 inch LED Smart TV 1080p HD Freeview HD | Richer Sounds (£380) Samsung UE40H6400 | 40 inch 3D LED Smart TV 1080p HD Freeview HD | Richer Sounds (£430) You may have to live with 3 x HDMI given your budget, especially if the 4th is only an occasional connection for your MacBook.

LG are always excellent, both in quality & value, with a great EPG. They don't do 40", but you can get a 39" for £319 or 42" for an extra tenner - the only problem is, LG seem to top out at 3 HDMI inputs. Freeview HD is what's pushing you over budget, because you only seem to get that on the smart models; you can save cash if you can live with SD Freeview.

DC, it turns out, is "Document Cloud". Anyone know if there are any big show stoppers with it yet, e.g. sandbox mode not working with UNC paths? (That was Reader X, IIRC.)

@Dos_Box - you may find this article a good starting point: The best Wii U games • Eurogamer.net I'll get a Wii U at some point, for Zelda/Mario/Mario Kart/Smash Bros... but with the NX announced, I figure I may as well wait until it's all on fire sale. Really have shot themselves in the foot for now. I think the tablet controller was a gimmick too far - it wasn't as easily explained as the WiiMote, and that meant they couldn't repeat their trick of selling to the grandmas. No-one ever got a good handle on how to develop for it, either, unlike the DS.

Goodbye, productive afternoon: Excerpt from the Winds of Winter | George R.R. Martin Read it quick - previous samples have since gone, such that only this one is available. Spoilery intro below (select the text, I've set it to white), although if you're caught up on the show there's nothing new here: It's a chapter from Alayne's POV (i.e. Sansa in disguise) at the Eyrie, showing her with Robert Arryn and Petyr Baelish. I'm only about 20% through, so I can't tell you more than that yet.

Reckon I'm going to stick with CM for now; I've fallen in love with all the tweaking and I think I'd lose a lot of those options with Oxygen right now. Waiting on a few reviews of it (Ars, Anand etc.) but I get the feeling it's a starting point and a lot of features are yet to be added in. There's mention of poor battery life, as well.