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Alienware's Star Wars PCs
CptnKirk writes "Alienware is now offering their high-end PCs pre-pimped with Star Wars themes. These systems have the usual assortment of configuration options. They're then additionally modded with your choice of Light Side or Dark Side themes. External decals, light kit and desktop theme. They even throw in a membership to the official Star Wars online fan club. I admit, booting the system to "what is your bidding my master", sounds appealing."
Thy, "What is thy bidding, my master?" ;)
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
AT deviantart:
http://www.deviantart.com/view/17884431/
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
$1499 for a PC with an AMD 3000, 512 MB ram and a GeForce 6600, no DVD or CD burner, no screen, and Windows XP Home? I built a PC for about $1000 a year ago with an AMD 3200, 1 gig ram, GF 5700 FX, and a DVD-ROM/CDRW.
Oh, but the case has a nice decal on it, I forgot.
rooooar
Part of the skill of designing and building models is to use those pieces in new and innovative ways.
A radar dish from a spaceship can be an umbrella for a picnic table, it could be part of a continuously variable transmission in a Mindstorms robot.
And it's really not worth the money I paid for it.
I am very disappointed with it. I can't wait for my next computer - which will NOT be alienware!
This computer runs real hot. So hot, that if you put it in your lap, you can get second degree burns within a few minutes. I got blisters all over my thighs once that took a week to go away. I put a pillow between me and it the next time, and the pillow's polyester fill melted. Now I use a wooden cutting board. What a hassle!
The computer runs so hot, you can't use any wireless cards on it. Those cards burn up, then cause the computer to freeze. Ach! I finally got it to be wireless by using one of those usb wireless cards, which because it hangs off the back, was able to stay cool enough to function. But I can never use my card slot on this computer, ever.
My graphics card - the ATI mobility radeon 9000 - is sorely outdated. It barely dragged its butt through thief III, but when I put Everquest II on it, it just choked. It's underpowered and most games are designed with a NVIDIA in mind, so my ATI mobility card looks even worse.
It weighs a ton. At 20 lbs, it wears me down if I have to take it long distances. Gah.
It's LOUD. The fan in the computer sounds like a hurricane. Plus even the power supply is loud! The power supply goes HISSSSS all the time, even when the computer is shut off, and it's very annoying. One guest thought we had escaping gas... turned out he was just hearing the power supply.
I cannot afford a new computer until December, but I am so looking forward to it. I have learned my lesson. I do not want my high end gaming machine on a laptop. I will keep my gaming machine in a tower so I can upgrade it properly, and get a LIGHTWEIGHT, SILENT, and COOL-RUNNING laptop that I can carry around with me so I can program wherever I go. This noisy, hot, heavy beast is just too cumbersome to program on, let alone play any games on its outdated graphics card!
Tepp
Actually, the 'source=1446' parameter is the same as I got in my email (I'm on the Alienware mailing list). I believe that it's so that Alienware can track who finds things on their site vs. who clicks on the email links, but that's just my own conjecture.
In any case, it's *not* a referral link so that the submitter can make more money.
While I agree with your assessment that a lot of people simply don't have the knowledge or inclination to build their own PCs, paying Alienware to do it is like wanting a sports car and paying $40,000 for a riced-up Lancer when a stock Ion Red Line or 350z would blow it off the road for ~$20,000 less.
Alienware's premiums are absurd, their rigs too ugly for words, and their construction quality and support questionable at best. They're Dell "quality" with an even larger markup. Their adherence to flagrantly overpriced & uncompetetive technologies (i.e. Pentium 4s & [i]PCIe[/i] 6800GTs*) isn't doing anyone any good either.
I mean, [i]come on[/i] these idiots are going to offer a dual core [i]gaming system[/i]! In its present incarnation, dual core is to gaming what electric hybrid engines are to rally racing.
*Note I said [i]PCIe[/i]; the 6800GT is a great card, but the PCIe variant is nearly $100 more than the virtually identical X800XL.
Of course if GL had known what he was doing, he would have known that 'thy' is the familiar form. 'You' is the honorific form in English. We just got rid of the familiar form, so 'thy' only sounds more formal...
...
I don't much care for Lucas, or the latest abominations he has foisted upon us in the last few years, but in his defense it should be pointed out that
Languages are living, mutating things. They aren't static, and what was true in 1500 by and large isn't true today.
Thy may have been the more informal form in older English. However, it has only survived because of religious zealots grovelling before their god, using the form as an honorific.
So, the fact that it sounds more formal to our ears, and is used as a more formal form of the language by the only people who still use it, means that, in today's language, it in fact has become the more formal form of the pronoun. Linguistic pedants, as usual, lag far behind the actual state of the language.
It is an interesting bit of etemology and linguistic history that "thy" and "your" have reversed meanings, in that "thee," "thy," etc. have come to mean an honorific form of "you," "your," etc. while "you," "your," etc. have come to mean the more familiar, natural form. It is even more interesting that this change in the language has occurred because of the exclusive use of these pronouns by the religous. What is less interesting is the degree to which many linguistic pedants will ignore the linguistic reality of the last century and a half (in terms of how the language is used and understood by those who speak it) in favor of a historical fact that bears no relevance to modern colloquialisms, particularly modern religious colloquialisms.
George Lucas may be an idiot about many things, but using "thy" to elevate Darth's relationship with the Emporor to one of worship rather than mere subservience was both correct in terms of the modern day language, and in terms of the effect it achieved.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The exact link that they included with the mail message that was sent to me, and I assume the rest of the members on the mailing list, was to this page which seems to be exactly the same link as was in the Slashdot posting.
I have no idea where Boing Boing got their link, but I'm telling you this is exactly what arrived in my inbox from Alienware, so I'm fairly confident it's not being used to track referrals for a single person.