The “Break it Down” Blog 

Saw this on Slashdot and thought it is a good sign of what’s to come for uncharted scientific territory (or government when applicable).

Basically the US National Security Space Office began looking into space-based solar power by opening a Wordpress blog site to the public and a private Google Groups discussion group for invite-only professional discussion of the issue.

What was thought to be a group of no more than 12, grew into a group of over 170 people participating in discussing the issue, challenges that are faced, ideas on how to work around some of the challenges, clear understanding of what would be required of such a task, etc.

The final report issued concludes many things, but the most important point is that the effort will go no where fast without government involvement and strong backing for it.

What are the chances of that happening with the current administration? I think we should hand this idea over to OPEC and see what their suggested plan is. It worked with the insurance companies and Medicare Part-D!

For the 11 people out there that still give a damn about Britney Spears, here is an unedited cut of her Gimme Dignity More music video… it’s sexy, like watching women at a retirement community do water arobics is sexy… which is to say it’s not entirely sexy and really it’s just more along the lines of you have problems. Enjoy!

The shots below are a comparison of Crysis running under DX9 at a Low quality setting compared to DX10 running at the highest quality setting. Apparently there is an “Extreme” quality setting in the game, but is currently locked since no hardware out there can run it at a playable frame rate (Remember when Doom 3 did this and no one could see a difference between Very High and Ultra but it took like 512MB of video memory or higher to turn it on? YAY!)

Left Low / Right High

 

And then for some scrolling-comparison, VE3D put together a merged panorama of all the different quality settings from Very High to Very Low (top to bottom).

Winners are:

• Sony BRAVIA: LCD Category
• Pioneer: Plasma Category
• Samsung: DLP Category

I’d say my additions to that list are:

• Sharp AQUOS: LCD Category
• Panasonic: Plasma Category
• Mitsubishi/Sony: DLP Category

Keeping in mind that the JD Power and Associates award is based on usage and user satisfaction ratings as they responded to the survey. So these are good things. Sort of like a ConsumerReports satisfaction report.

Good god, I had no idea cinnamon (in it’s plain form) does this to you… it’s like macing yourself in the mouth