NVIDIA GeForce To Quadro Soft-Mod Guide

The NVIDIA Quadro family of professional graphics cards are very, very expensive. They are generally 2-5X more expensive than their gaming counterparts, the NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards. But everyone knows that Quadro and GeForce graphics cards are virtually identical in hardware.

Yes, you read that right. Even with the unbelievable price tag, the NVIDIA Quadro is really no different from their desktop GeForce counterparts. So why is NVIDIA charging you so much for a Quadro?

It all revolves around the driver support for professional 3D applications like 3ds Max or Maya. Quadro drivers allow the Quadro to be used to accelerate the rendering operations of such professional 3D applications while GeForce drivers do not. This is the basis for the premium prices NVIDIA (and ATI) charge for their professional-grade graphics cards.

Obviously, you cannot just use Quadro drivers with your GeForce graphics cards. After all, it represents the thin red line between a really, really fat profit margin and just a "normal" profit margin. NVIDIA Quadro drivers are designed to detect the presence of an NVIDIA Quadro graphics card. It will not install if a GeForce card is detected instead.

However, there is an easy way to soft-mod (modify in software) a NVIDIA GeForce desktop graphics card into a NVIDIA Quadro professional graphics card. We will show you just how to do it in this guide.

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MS Paint Tricks

MSPaint is actually a very powerful image editor. Here's all the things about MSPaint you probably didn't know.

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The Curious Case of the Arkansas Diamonds

In a state park full of amateur diamond miners, one prospector dug up a valuable stone worth thousands of dollars—or did he?

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Earth, observed

The Earth Observatory is a website run by NASA's Earth Observing System Project Science Office (EOSPSO). Bringing together imagery from many different satellites and astronaut missions, the website publishes fantastic images with highly detailed descriptions, feature articles and more. Gathered here are some standout photographs from the collections in the Earth Observatory over the past several years.

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The sport of the samurai lives on

ZUSHI, Japan: It is about as far from the Olympic sport of archery as it can get. The bow is taller than the person shooting it and, to the uninitiated, it appears lopsided and unbalanced. There are no sights and no high-tech stabilizers.

And it is done on horseback, at upward of 65 kilometers per hour, or 40 miles per hour.

It's called yabusame, and it is the sport of the samurai.

Each year, archers in feudal shooting gear climb on their decorated mounts for a lively competition on the beach of Zushi, a town just south of Tokyo, galloping in the sand as thousands of onlookers cheer and shout. The first competition was held here in 1199.

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Bridge on the River Kwai

Begun in October 1942, using prisoner of war (POW) labour, it was completed and operational by early February 1943.

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In a few short days, an African American man will move from his
private residence into a much larger and infinitely more expensive
one owned not by him but by the taxpayers. A vast lawn, a perimeter
fence and many well trained security specialists will insulate him
from the rest of us but the mere fact that this man will be residing
in this house should make us all stop and count or blessings -
because it proves that we live in a nation where anything is possible.

Many believed this day would never come. Most of us hoped and
prayed that it would, but few of us actually believed we would live
to see it. Racism is an ugly thing in all of it's forms and there is
little doubt that if this man had moved into this house fifteen years
ago, there would have been a great outcry - possibly even rioting in
the streets.

Today, we can all be both grateful and proud that no such mayhem will
take place.when this man takes up residency in this house.

This man, moving into this house at this time in our nation's
history is much more than a simple change of addresses for him - it
is proof of a change in our attitude as a nation. It is an amends of
sorts - the righting of a great wrong. It is a symbol of our growth,
and of our willingness to "judge a man, not by the color of his skin
but by the content of his character".

There can be little doubt now that the vast majority of us truly
believe that this man has earned both his place in history and his
new address. His time in this house will not be easy - it will be
fraught with danger and he will face many challenges. I am sure there
will be many times when he asks himself how in the world he ended up
here and like all who have gone before him, the experience will age
him greatly.

But I for one will not waste an ounce of worry for his sake -
because in every way a man can, he asked for this. His whole life for the past
fifteen years appears to have been inexorably leading this man
toward this house. It is highly probable that that in the past,
despite all of his actions, racism would have kept this man out
of this house. Today, I thank the lord above that I am an American
and that I live in a nation where wrongs are righted, where justice
matters and where truly anything is possible.

Who is this man? OJ Simpson of course!

Windows 7 beta howto - download, activate and dual-boot

Lifehacker's Adam Pash wrote a guide for testing the Windows 7 beta on a machine already running XP or Vista. It walks you though adjusting the partition size of your current OS so you can test the new system out without dumping your current setup.

Before you can get started, though, you'll have to download the Windows 7 ISO image an burn it to a DVD. Unfortunately, the download links on the Microsoft site have been temporarily removed, apparently due to the volume of download demand. Links to the official 32bit and 64bit downloads were available for a brief time, though, and they were posted to a number of blogs. I've posted what appear to work below.

You'll also need to get an activation key or the OS will expire in 30 days. This is also unavailable at the official download site, though the Neowin blog has recently posted an alternate way to obtain the activation key as well.

So, to sum things up:

1. Download the Windows 7 Beta ISO (warning: big 2 gig file): 32-bit Version or 64-bit Version
2. Get the activation key using Neowin's tip
3. Set up dual-boot with Adam's instructions

Note that the activation keys are said to be limited to 2.5 million copies. It might be smart to grab one now, even if you weren't planning on downloading or installing the OS right away.

Windows 7 Beta - Official site. The official download process should be available again soon.

Source

Cashel Dennehy The Boys of the Lough

Enigma Desktop Customisation

The Enigma 1.1 ZIP archive includes config files for Samurize and Rainmeter, fonts, a Windows theme, and more. Unzip it to get the full installation instructions. Nice work, Kaelri! The Enigma 1.1 customization package is a free download for Windows only.

Link to Lifehacker post HERE

The female Robin Hood

10 Weird And Wonderful Oddities Of Nature

Nature is full of wonder and mystery - and, fortunately for us, bizarre facts!

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Baalbek, Lebanon

Approximately 86 kilometers northeast of the city of Beirut in eastern Lebanon stands the temple complex of Baalbek. Situated atop a high point in the fertile Bekaa valley, the ruins are one of the most extraordinary and enigmatic holy places of ancient times. Long before the Romans conquered the site and built their enormous temple of Jupiter, long even before the Phoenicians constructed a temple to the god Baal, there stood at Baalbek the largest stone block construction found in the entire world.

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12 Elegant Examples of Evolution

In preparation for Charles Darwin's upcoming 200th birthday, the editors of Nature compiled a selection of especially elegant and enlightening examples of evolution.

They describe it as a resource "for those wishing to spread awareness of evidence for evolution by natural selection." Given the continuing battles over evolution in America's public schools — and, for that matter, the Islamic world — such a resource is most welcome.

However, I'd like to suggest another way of looking at the findings below, which range from the moray eel's remarkable second jaw to the unexpected plumage of dinosaurs. They are, quite simply, wondrous — glimpses through an evolutionary frame of life's incredible narrative, expanding to fill every possible nook and cranny of Earth's biosphere.

After all, it's hard to stir passion about the scientific validity of evolution without first captivating minds and imaginations. And this is a fine place to start.

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