Ahh well....seems Im sucked into this one

Leaving evolution etc aside for a moment, can somebody answer this basic question....Why did God do it?!! [and sorry if this has been broached before, I couldnt be bothered re-reading the whole ten pages.]

OK...so early days...pre-creation...there's God....now was he having a bad day or what!! He comes up with the idea of creating the world, and mankind..and these are the rules.....man's got to be good..right!?...cos he's got free will built in as one of the game parameters....and he gets the rules from Moses..[direct from the G-man]....so the good guys go straight to a cool place.....and the baddies...now wait for it!....burn FOREVER in hell!! [nice!]....but hang on...things go bad [he didnt see this coming!!!??]...so he has to send his son [JC] down to save mankind!! [can't really be his son though as he was born through immaculate conception....but sorry this is an aside].....but tings dont really improve.....eg the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Holocaust, Pol Pot etc etc.....but don't worry things will finally be cleaned up with the second coming!!!

SO...is this what it's all about???....and my question again....Why Did he Do IT?....This is a guy who all the superlatives were written for....perfect, infinite, all-loving, omnipresent, omnipotent, eternal, all-seeing, all powerful [a sparrow doesnt fall off his perch without the G-man knowing].....and yet he creates this vale of tears we call home and where it seems, if they dont play by his rules, a sizable proportion of mankind will suffer, like all hell, for eternity [protesting no doubt that they didnt agree to the rules in the first place...and if they had know, they wouldnt have joined in at all!!]

Why couldnt he have just left things alone.....done nothing....contemplated his navel or whatever...and saved us all a lot of trouble?

Pete, its all relative and it depends of course which side of the fence your on but I feel Biden won comfortably......if the criteria is who I would like to see as the US VP and possibly the head honcho. Palin left me glassy eyed and pretty scared every time she failed to answer a question and instead launched, with that icy smile on here face, into some frothy, virtually meaningless pep talk on the glories of the good ol' US and how 'Gee...u know...trust us, were gonna make every thing good, safe , democratic...and well..... really nice."

And on further reflection I think Biden's main task was to associate MC Cain with the Bush mob and the last eight years of government and to question his 'maverick' status while Palins's response to this and her claim that Mc Cain was a free thinking, agent of change was pretty lame.

Ron,
She may be quaint...and even sexy, in a 'Madame Lash' sort of way....but doesnt the fact that she has an actuarial chance of 1 in 5 of being your president in less than for years worry you just a little?

@unknownuser said:

I have recently had to change my 8600GT 512mb after trying so many different drivers and never getting it right in SU.

What did you change to Dylan?......and what prolems did it solve?

Im thinking of seriously of scrapping my 512 8800GT and getting something like a nVidia GeForce GTX 260, http://www.trustedreviews.com/graphics/
but to be honest it would be pretty much a stab in the dark.

Im actually looking forward to friday..the VPs debate!
In fact I dont think Palin will get creamed....she's a tough, savy chick...as she shows here http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/20080928_fey_takes_on_palin_take_two/
But the big question is gonna be...'will she be wired?'...will Carl Rove be in the next room feeding her answers?...My guess is that she will be wearing her hair down....easier to hide the receivers of course!.....so Biden's best line could be..."Is that a radio in your ear..or are you just happy to hear me?"

I think I can see a bulge in Mikes cheek on this one...but to be honest I would much rather have some 'smart' bod governing me rather than a 'democratically elected' B grade actor with Old Timer's Disease or some imbicile son of a former pres.
Lets face it ...'democracy' is a blip on mankind's political landscape.....it was a nice idea in ancient Athens...[forgetting for the moment, women and slaves]......but it really is a localised and recent phenomena where the same universal tools of gaining power over the masses are used [eg. threats, bribery, manipulation, deciet, murder etc etc].....the main redeeming factor of democracy [and this is only true in an amazingly small number of countries] is that you can vote out some moron before he does do too much damage and replace him with a some other idiot who will hopefully be voted out in 3 or 4 years before the intoxication of power becomes too much for him as well.
This is sadly little different from the universal battle between families, clans, tribes, cities, states.... where the promise is that things will be better..... if we first demolish the opposition..[some times there is less blood spilt in the democratic process]
But I dont think IQ is the thing...its 'intelligence'.....and the idea of the 'enlightened despot' is appealing....but then Alexander came to a sticky end....ahhh well, the wheel keeps turning

A rather depressing view of the 'differences' between the two parties from one of the wisest heads in the middle east, Robert Fisk
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080926_robert_fisk_the_middle_east_is_not_a_complex_place/?ln

Ok, yes, we should all be a little worried.
Eight years ago an intelligent white VP was beaten by The Imbecile and the Prince of Darkness.
Fours years, dito an intelligent white war veteran.
What chance has a very intelligent coloured guy got against a nice ol' white haired guy and a hockey mum [who has, by the way, been saved from any form of witchcraft......remember that, Putin!]?
[And Foreign Policy?....who needs Foreign Policy?.....why not leave that to the foreigners themselves...the Ruskies, the Frogs..the Wops....let them sort it out.....in the mean time, we've got the missiles...and we know how to use them!!]

Tom,
I agree with Dean about the tree shadows.
The trees are dramatic enough in themselves...how about turning off their shadows all together?...and using them [the trees] as framing for the architecture while keeping the ground planes uncluttered?
In particular, I would be interested in seeing the first couple of overheads without the tree shadows, where they seem to dominate.

Tom I have to say that sometimes I wonder where your going with your experimentation
But...WOW!!...these are beautiful.....particularly the lower views!!!!

@unknownuser said:

Maybe it's me, but I don't see any real potential in this.
Sure enough visitors stay longer on web pages, but if I have to walk to a door in 3D to follow a link or just click on a link with my mouse in 2D to visit that link, I think the latter has my preference.
I say this as a long time web developer. The web is for displaying information. If you want to be immersed in a virtual reality world go play a 3D game.

Just my .2

Coen, maybe it is indeed you

"The web is for displaying information"...!!??.... well it used to be. Today, where we have a generation brought up on, immersed in 3D games...where its just about possible now to produce photorealistic avatars....where we have Second Life, Lively etc. pushing the 3D web experience....the 3D world is with us now!
I'll be very surprised if people say in five years arent expecting, demanding, 3D interactivity in all sorts of web experiences....not just confined to gaming.

@gaieus said:

Yes, interesting. A little bit buggy and jaggy but surely it is not far that you can do all these things. I'm not talking about explaining design to a client (you are the architect) but how about a virtual tour with an interactive guide in a reconstructed archaeological site?

Gaieus, Its early days with this...it was released today and Im not sure its out of beta yet...[and produced in my city of Melbourne! ]...but yes, an interactive tour of an archaeological site!.....a show room with 3D components for sale! [AF pricks up his ears ].....its actually VERY interesting....and there is the possibility of 3D artists [thats us?] selling our services. But its still not clear what files it supports?

Interesting.
http://www.exitreality.com/

Info is a bit scarce but I have a feeling that loading a SU model onto a website where anybody can do a realtime walk through/around is not far away.
Where you can meet somebody, onsite, online, and explain the various features of the design.

@kwistenbiebel said:

Strange, I might say just the opposite.
My 8800GT performs well.

The speed drop I experience while editing SU files ,in my case, is caused by the way SU is coded, but I am sure it is not directly related to the 8800GT card. That speed lag is a thing every one experiences using SU for complexer models, regardless of the Graphical card used.

Kwistie, Im not talking about a speed drop...I get black screens, white screens, missing tool bars, SU not responding messages. A Piranesi demo Im trialing is just about unusable...but I get great results on a laptop running a 8600GS card. Even Google acknowledges that this [8800GT] card can cause problems. i wish it was just a machine configuration issue but actually Tavi is running an almost identical machine and getting great results.
All very frustrating.
Sorry Spence...its a bit of a lottery as you said, but Im looking seriously at up grading to the 8800GTX...[if somsbody can tell me what the 'X' factor is ]

Actually, looking at this [with my uneducated eye] http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce_8800.html there doesnt seem to be such a huge difference between the the GT and GTX ?

Sorry Mate.....dog = baaaaad!!

Im running a 8800GT which is an absolute dog.......can somebody tell me what is the difference that the 'x' makes?

OK Dave, looks like the video card. You will need a new card to support the wide screen resolution....but you will find it's worth it

Dave,
The native resolution of any LCD screen is pretty much what you are stuck with....and as far as I know any screen, 24" or above, will be using 1920X1200 as native rez. so you should be looking to use this rather than 1600X1200.....you should be able to change this in the display settings.

Im a Logitech fan as well and run an almost identical setup to Jim. I use a VX revolution for the lappy and a MX revolution for the desktop. They both run of their own USB dongles without any conflict.
The MX is fantastic.....cordless and with its own battery recharger!

Tim a bit more news here
http://www.formz.com/news/news.php