Seret

No, that's perfectly reasonable. A lot of people have their machines set up that way. You pay extra, but you're paying for increased performance, the same as putting extra money into any other component. That's your answer then. As long as you've got access to one somewhere you should be ok. You'll need it when you install the OS unless you're installing an OS that can go on a USB stick, but if you haven't got any apps that need it you'll probably never use it again. Having said that they're pretty cheap, so if you don't need that bay for anything else it wouldn't kill you to have one.

Yep, that's the problem. Try searching for some of the smaller ISPs, they often compete with the big boys by tailoring their service for people that don't fit the typical profile, like heavy downloaders or people who want static IPs. You tend to get better service from a small ISP in my experience, too.

Indeed, I was talking about storage. Just seems odd to me to stick a nasty 7200rpm magnetic hard drive into a £600 PC. I agree. Until the RPi came along my HTPC was a mini-ITX. The cases are so small that distances are short and fans can exhaust straight out the vents (which make a higher proportion of the case). As long as you're not wedging more than you should into the case airflow is almost a non-issue.

It's not just about games though. Even if you buy a "gaming" PC chances are you'll spend a fair bit of your time doing general computing tasks. If you had to edit a video, would you do it on your high-spec "gaming" machine, or your tablet? It just seems odd to go for decent specs across the rest of the spectrum, then massively bottleneck it for I/O.

A lot of jobs aren't advertised. If you're straight out of school you probably need to do some networking and meet people. Are you a member of one of the professional bodies? Get out to some of their events and make some contacts.

Javster, if you're happy dropping over £600 on a PC then you should seriously consider an SSD. An old-fashioned spinny drive in a nice modern machine like that is a serious performance bottleneck. They're not that expensive any more. You can keep a magnetic drive on board if you need bulk storage space, but you'll want to put your OS and main apps on an SSD, or use a cache drive that will manage that for you.

Marquee? I would have hit you with a permaban

Data caps suck. If you can switch to an ISP that does unlimited and live happily ever after.

Having said that, getting electricity from photons isn't difficult. It seems the same principles for working with less frisky photons (eg: photoelectric effect) work with gamma rays. Probably better ways of doing it, but I imagine it's one of those problems that would stress materials people more than physicists.

Tell me about it. I have Dogs of War for fantasy. Plenty of fan support for some of the old stuff.

I'm sure Squat players find that very comforting

The amount of maintenance you can actually do in orbit is very limited, and it's absurdly expensive. Think of it like trying to fix an aeroplane in flight.

GW games are probably the wrong thing to get into if you want to wargame on the cheap. Don't despair though, get down to your local club and see what people are playing at skirmish level. My local club are doing Chain of Command for WW2 and Muskets and Tomahawks for TYW and you can get set up for either for about £60. There might be some folks down there playing 40K that your little force can tag along with until you've managed to build up your Tau through little purchases here and there. Stick to getting the core plastics to start with. They're much better value and you'll need them anyway. Check out independent stockists, they tend to have lower prices than buying direct from GW. Keep an eye on Ebay too, there's always second hand stuff.

As an engineer who spends all day with engineers I'd say you'd have to have an almost pointlessly broad definition of aspergers to reach that kind of number. Generally speaking engineers approach life fairly rationally, and many are very data-driven and have little time for sentimentality. However, there's a difference between highly rational neurotypicals and those on the spectrum. Many engineers are highly social, and being that way is often a huge asset to your career. You can only get so far on pure technical abilities, you have to be able to network, and if you ever want to manage or lead other engineers then you need those soft skills. Having aspergers is career-limiting, but aspies would be uncomfortable is management positions anyway, so nobody really minds. Horses for courses. I would say there are some engineers who are on the spectrum, but they're a minority (maybe 10%). They tend to be the ones the other engineers think are nerdy but useful as they do lots of really good in-depth analysis, and are often the ones who knock up useful tools and spreadsheets that every one else uses to make their life easier.

Galaxies collide all the time anyway. IIRC there are several small galaxies colliding with the Milky Way right now.

Yeah, you might want to cool it on the conspiracy theory stuff. This forum clamps down hard on that (and with good reason).

Lol. Too much Star Trek for you, I think.

It's definitely dry as in very little precipitation. Being cold will also make the air very dry, you just can't get a lot of water into air that cold. But no, the Sahara desert does not have high humidity. Although the original statement didn't make any distinction between relative and absolute humidity, you'd normally have to assume people are talking about relative, since it's the one that matters.

I should point out that when lajoswinkler says "mild burns" he means mild as in "first degree". What you'd actually feel is the worst case of sunburn you've had, all over your body. You'd be very ill and in a lot of pain.

Technology today is better than in the Venera days, but not enough to make a huge difference. The challenges are large, we'd still find it extremely difficult to land a probe with a lifespan of more than a few hours.

You'd have to be mad not to, it'd be the adventure of a lifetime. I'm 38 and have a wife and two young kids. I'd miss a couple of years of them growing up, but I think they'd be proud of me for doing it and would understand why I took the chance. If it was a one-way trip: no way.

That would actually be pretty cool. I generally leave Jeb in space permanently, he'd have clocked up some mad hours.

What do you think money is a measure of?

Repairs would be uneconomical. You'd just accept the reduced output. Bit of a moot point though, because the array would be uneconomical even if it was functioning perfectly.

If you're somewhere with dark enough skies spotting satellites is actually pretty common, too. You'll see one go over every few minutes.