GK -

To check your page file you have to be logged in as an administrator.

I’m on Vista, XP is different, I’ll try to do it from memory.  Right-click My Computer, select Properties and then the Advanced tab.

Under Performance, select Settings.  Then Advanced tab.

You should now see a Virtual Memory section, click Change.

In here you will see the Page File size for each drive you have and probably “System managed size” is checked.  If “Custom size” is checked it might be too low for what you need.  You mentioned you have space on your hard drive so you should probably have “System managed size” selected.

Alternatively, you can select “Custom” and specify it to a large size, maybe 4 GB or 4096 MB.  You would have to then click “Set” and reboot (I think XP would have to reboot).  This would give you RAM + 4 GB for memory.

If loading the game is still slow (is BF3 slow to load, or is web browsing slow to switch to a new page?) you have another issue we’ll have to hammer out.

Updated drivers are huge, what error do you get when you try to update?

What changes have been made since you were able to load Crossfire fast?

A recurring theme on this site is my surprise at the lack of basic science knowledge possessed by educated adults. An interested reader can find one example here.

Not being a worldly person, I’m limited to observing only the end products of the American education system and I certainly grant this may not (hope not) be the case everywhere.

The typical adult can be forgiven their lack of knowledge, I’m sure they’re busy doing what it is that they do and I expect they know enough of what they need to know to do what they do well enough.

But it is frustrating to find a lack of basic science facts slipping into articles in science (cough, cough) magazines such as Discover. I don’t recall when last I paid for my subscription to Discover, but I still receive it monthly and read it in the little room while attending to my sitting down business.

This month, I was dismayed by a comment made by Andrew Moseman in a short article titled “Bang Zoom-To The Stars” discussing future propulsion systems. The “Bang Zoom” piece was meant to compliment the larger article it was contained it, an interesting piece written by Tim Folger titled “The Planet Boom” which chronicled the success of Kepler and the challenges the head of the Kepler mission team William Borucki overcame to fund and engineer the project.

Moseman’s errant statement became an interruption to, and distraction from, the overall larger piece. Here is the statement from the short piece on propulsion systems:

Unfortunately, sending a spacecraft to even the closest star (Alpha Centauri, 4.3 light-years away) would take 70,000 years at the speed of today’s chemical rockets.

Catch it? My 13 year-old did, which is why I sent this letter to the Discover editors:

Please note that Andrew Moseman incorrectly stated that Alpha Centauri is the next closest star in his short “Bang Zoom – To The Stars” piece within the fascinating article by Tim Folger “The Planet Boom” in the May 2011 magazine.

Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the Sun, it is in the constellation Alpha Centauri along with the stars Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B. While it is accurate to state that Alpha Centauri is the closest star system, Proxima Centauri is the closest star in that system.

Please correct this commonly stated piece of misinformation for your readers.

Cheers,

Scott Ramsdell
Gardner, KS USA

To be fair, I spent several minutes trying to locate Andrew Moseman’s email address to notify him as well, but couldn’t locate an email within the time I was willing to allot for such a search.  I did find Andrew’s personal blog, Popular Science articles, Discover blog and articles, Twitter feed and LinedIn page, but no actual way to send information to Andrew.  I would imagine if such an avenue were easily discoverable, Andrew like many journos would be inundated with absurd rants (which the reader may have at this point concluded mine is especially given that I mistakenly said “constellation” above instead of “star system”).

A self proclaimed science author making a small error in a science article is not that big of a deal, but does illustrate to me how easy it is to not question popular ideas.

I do it too, in my rant “2035, 2350, Whatever it Takes”, I falsely quote Michael Keaton’s character in Mr. Mom as saying, “You know, 120, 121, whatever it takes?” which in the comments is corrected by Parrot commenter:

You do realize that the quote from Mr. Mom is “220… 221, whatever it takes” right? It seems you are guilty of the copy paste culture you seem to be railing against. In fact, this is the funniest thing I’ve seen this week. You blatantly did NOT research the supposed fact you were referencing, and have become worse than the 2035/2050 number game you insulted.

Nice work!

Which hilariously describes me as worse than the 2035/2050 number game that I insulted when the real numbers are 2035 and 2350, so Parrot commenter is guilty of it as well, and at this point I’m expecting Douglas Adams to rip this post off the Internets from the great beyond at an improbability factor of precisely 2 to the 60 billion against, 60 billion coincidentally is the number of planets in our galaxy as estimated by the Kepler team so far.

I’ll update if Discover Magazine’s editors get back to me with anything other than an auto-reply.

Not certain of the credibility of this as no real citation is given, but next Monday the EU may be proposing that by 2050 no fossil fueled vehicles will be tolerated:
here.

Lofty goal, would be nice I suppose if not for the fact that electricity comes from somewhere. Maybe by 2049 the EU will legislate the elusive lighting harness for every electrical device, that oughta do it.

In the Pareto diagram of CO2 problems (if you Believe), cars should rank behind ships, planes, trucks and trains, but heh, at least the EU is bringing the Concern close to the individual.

One NASA scientist is reporting possible alien microbe fossils on several meteorites he’s collected.

Another scientist interviewed for the story discusses panspermia:

“Maybe life was seeded on earth — it developed on comets for example, and just landed here when these things were hitting the very early Earth,” Shostak speculated. “It would suggest, well, life didn’t really begin on the Earth, it began as the solar system was forming.”

These are different meteorites than gave rise to the claim that Mars had life, the story is here.

While I have no doubt life exists elsewhere in the Universe and quite likely the Solar System as well, proving that still requires extraordinary evidence.

Two planets have been found in the same orbit, orbiting their star at Lagrange points: here.

Pretty cool.

We can’t predict the weather next week, and we can’t predict the climate in the next decade, but here’s a prediction of the climate in the year 3000.

Funny stuff.

I predict the prediction is wrong.  I base my prediction of the historical accuracy of the predictions of the predictors.

The doomsayers have not successfully predicted any long term trend, as they simply do not understand the complex inter-relationship of all the variables in the climate system.  No-one does.  Flip a coin.

Foxnews has compiled a list of botched forecasts, it’s a pretty amusing read.

NASA loses to a 10 year old girl.

A 10 year old girl beats all of NASA’s computers and astronomers.  Incredible.  Incredible waste of money that is.

Congratulations to the young miss Kathryn Gray, what you found is really cool, keep up the good work.

Given the uncertain nature of the facts of so called climate change and the absolute lack of any scientific reasoning capability of the standard citizen, the sharks are attempting to feast on the lack of understanding.

Climate change is becoming something legal firms are advertising they are able to recoup damages for: here.

Fortunately, there is the following comforting quote from the above article:

The number of suits filed has increased radically. But the number of suits claiming damages from climate change that have been successful remains zero.

Let’s hope it stays that way.  Suing regarding weather is ridiculous, long term climate change as a result of human activity is still unproven and therefore no-one is culpable for damages.

No doubt the sharks will play to emotions though, facts be damned.

We’ve covered the apparently made for TV drama of the Whale Wars and the sinking of the Adi Gil.

Here is Follow Up 5.

Now, Greenpeace has a newer Adi Gil, and they named it “Godzilla”, oh we get it: you guys are children after all.

With that craft waiting in the wings, I fully stand by my interpretation of the video that Greenpeace deliberately sunk the Adi Gil.

Young great whites bite people once because their jaws are not strong.

Turns out they aren’t just sampling, finding our flesh undelectible, and moving on.  They’re saving us for later.

I’ve never bought into the notion that they confuse us for seals, seals are lithe and agile while swimmers are not, and white sharks hunt visually.  Sufters with their flappy appendages might resemble turtles from below, but not seals.  I can see biting a surf board as undesirable and causing a shark to move on, but not biting flesh.

White sharks are an apex predator, they eat what they want.  They don’t bite by mistake, there’s just simply nothing in their evolutionary history for them to fear, so they don’t.

Not quite sure what to make of this tragic article, for two pages it describes terrible conditions in Columbia without blaming global warming (that is, you and me dear reader) once:

Scientists attribute the intense rainfall to the weather phenomenon known as La Nina, which has caused unusually cold temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the Equator. And the flooding could get worse.

But many Colombians say the blame goes beyond Mother Nature to government officials and building contractors. Inadequate drainage means that even brief rain showers turn the streets of Bogota, Cartagena and many other cities into lakes. Developers have been allowed to build tract homes and apartment buildings in floodplains.

Apologies for using a tragedy as the theme of this post, but I thought it showed an interesting change in reporting by attributing weather disasters to naturally occurring weather patterns, you know, climate.

It seems NASA is as good at microbial science as they are at climate science.

Microbial: “This paper should not have been published.”

Climate:

A group of top NASA boffins says that current climate models predicting global warming are far too gloomy, and have failed to properly account for an important cooling factor which will come into play as CO₂ levels rise.

Climate models need to be re-thought.  Gosh, who would have thought that plants needed to be modeled accurately in the climate models?  I wonder how much of the incoming solar insolation is sequestered by plants and animals and used to sustain life instead of being absorbed by the land and seas and subsequently radiated back into the atmosphere?  Dunno, it’s not in the climate models I’ve seen.

All the models I’ve seen say incoming radiation must equal outgoing radiation, why?  Look at all the cold blooded animals, they’re using incoming radiation for survival.  Sure it’s a small fraction, but add it to the list of small climate variables I’ve addressed before. (toward the bottom of the rant)  How about solar powered hornets?

Will no-one think of the solar powered hornets?!

The original is more impressive, being over 2000 years old, but now humanity has a Lego Antikythera Mechanism!