Does anyone else suffer from "Once you go MMORPG you can never go back" syndrome?
No. World of Warcraft could never hold my interest, and both Morrowind and now Oblivion have distracted me significantly from my active City of Heroes/Villains subscription.
I was recently informed that the 2407 is available, but only in Japan. I did have a link to the Dell Japan page, but I have unfortunately since lost it.
I am not the previous poster, however I also use a Dell 2405 FPW.
What kind of resolution do you run the games at?
In general, I run at native whenever possible. If I am playing a game where the native resolution is too taxing for my video card which is a Nvidia GeForce 6800GT, I drop the resolution to 1680x1050, which is also a 16:10 resolution. I have noticed very little loss of image quality as a result of the non-native resolution.
When running Quake 4 or Doom 3, I run at 1280x1024 and use the game's built in 16:10 resolution rendering option.
If native, are you running any FPS games?
I run a great number of FPS games myself. My biggest problem has been with games that do not well support 16:10 resolutions. Surprisingly, I have been able to obtain such display output from even older games, such as Deus Ex, though in some cases this requires manually modifying configuration files. With other games, however, I have discovered that native 16:10 resolutions are unfortunately completely unsupported or -- in a few cases -- the games attempt to scale output at such resolutions to match a 4:3 aspect ratio regardless. I have noticed this with the Grand Theft Auto games and with Lithtech engine games.
I looked at their site and I don't see a response time listed for the monitor which is usually not a good thing.
I had heard some reports regarding poor gaming performance, however my experience with computer games, with GameCube games running via component and with Dreamcast games running through VGA has been fully satisfactory. I am not aware of the exact response time of the display, however I have noticed no ghosting during any gameplay. One forum post elsewhere suggested that poor image quality in gaming is remedied through adjusting the monitor refresh rates when running at lower resolutions.
Also, will it support 1600x1200 without streching (meaning, just have two black bars left and right of the screen)?
The 2405FPW supports three view modes when not displaying the native resolution of 1920x1200 (which is a widescreen resolution, though I have encountered a few games -- such as Lithtech engine games that horizontally compress images at this resolution): fill, which stretches the image to fill the display; 1:1, which displays the image at a 1:1 pixel ratio, showing a smaller screen surrounded by a large black border of unused pixels; and aspect, which scales the image to fill as much of the monitor as possible while preserving the aspect ratio, using black bars as borders on the sides or -- for 1080i or 720p input -- at the top and bottom.
The one drawback that I have encountered is that the monitor is a 16:10 aspect ratio screen, however it offers no option to fit 480p or 480i input to a 16:9 aspect ratio. This means that I cannot use the "widescreen" option on GameCube games. Also, were I to use a progressive scan DVD player with the unit, I would require a unit that upscales the output image to a high definition resolution of 1080i or 720p, as the native aspect ratio would then properly be displayed as 16:9. I have not tested the device with 480i input flagged as anamorphic (as would be output from a non-progressive scan DVD player set to display a 16:9 image for DVDs so encoded), however.
A crystal is nothing more than a repeating structure of atoms arranged by the "shape" of the atoms.
I am aware of this. However, crystal formation creates structures corresponding to a complex "pattern", which -- according to your interpretation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics -- is impossible. I would suggest that it is your understanding of the Second Law that is in error, rather than a case of every biologist on the planet simply not considering fundamental chemistry.
How did it "evolve" to have such a huge dynamic range of light?
Very simply. Biological photoreceptor structures that could not handle such a dynamic range resulted in the organism with such structures not surviving to reproduce.
If man cannot duplicate the performance of such structures by intelligent efforts, you expect me to believe they came about by chance?
You are appealing to incredulity, and you are also demonstrating a lack of understanding of the process of evolution. While mutation and environmental shifts are themselves "random" events, the result of natural selection is not "random", and is what creates the specialized structures found in living organisms. The result is that a diverse number of structures can come to exist, but only a select few will remain in existence for a significant length of time. Human development techniques do not tend to use such a process, because such processes are cost-prohibitive.
When I asked him what was wrong, he said, "We can't exist. It's all too complex for us to be alive." I just smiled at him.
I believe that this is known as "argument from incredulity".
To bring all this around to the start of this paragraph, the clincher for me as to my view on Creationism now comes from Christ's own words.
So you are saying that your lack of acceptance of a well-established scientific theory is not based upon inadequacies with the evidence, but rather your interpretation of an unrelated religious text?
Except, of course, that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is of recent origin, an attempt to ridicule any theistic belief.
Curious. The Flying Spaghetti Monster was created as a means of mocking the "Intelligent Design" movement. Are you saying that the proponents of Intelligent Design, who state that ID is not religious in nature, are lying?
Shell scripts that contain previously unknown root exploits?
Actually, most of the attachments are Windows executables without any "exploits". They take advantage of the fact that quite a few idiots run as Administrator all the time.
So, you are saying, that if someone creates a theory that is so sound proof, so accurate, so factual that it cannot be falsified it ceases to become science?
No. What is said is that it is impossible for an explanation conforming to the scientific method to ever satisfy your given criteria.
Mind you, this theory is shot to hell by the final episode of TNG, where he has to remove his VISOR because his "visual cortex is falling out of alignment" or something.
I believe that you are referring to Star Trek: Insurrection where a regenerative field surrounding the planet featured in the movie causes Geordi's optic nerves to regenerate and restore his ability to see.
It should be noted, however, that Geordi was not wearing the VISOR at the time, and had switched to ocular implants directly on the eyes. Such ocular implants had been mentioned previously in the television series as early as season 2, however Geordi declined to use them as they resulted in 20% less visual acutiy as his VISOR. Presumably the technology in such implants improved to such a point to make them equal or superior to the VISOR by the time of Star Trek: First Contact.
Note that the events of Star Trek: Insurrection were apparently not permanent, as Geordi was wearing his ocular implants in Star Trek: Nemesis. This movie also suggests that Data's emotion chip was no longer in existence either, as the android never shows any sign of emotion during the movie.
3. Run a good hardware and software anti-virus and firewall system. This means not letting every employee and their cousin having admin access to their machines.
You wouldn't believe the hell I had to go through to implement a policy like this. And the resistance came from other employees in the tech department, not from the faculty themselves. I would set up computers with standard User level accounts, and the instant a user needed some obscure software package installed, one of the tech support heads would walk them through the process of MAKING THEIR ACCOUNT ADMINISTRATOR LEVEL by having them log in via our tech admin accounts and changing their user account setting.
Of course, he didn't want them downgrading their account back to user level. He thought that this made tech support much easier, because users wouldn't have to come to us to install software. Apparently he didn't think the problem we had of having to wipe user machines every two months (at least) after the latest trojan outbreak was related.
Sometimes the "enemy" is the idiot in your tech support department.
It's pretty stupid that every game I buy I have to find, download, and install a no cd crack. This opens me up to security issues just so that I can play my game
This isn't too big an issue if you only run the games under a standard user account rather than an account with full Administrator privledges.
One of the main reasons I download CD cracks is so that I don't have to run games in the Admin mode that many CD checks demand, though -- to the credit of the companies producing that garbate -- more and more CD check systems do not require full Admin privledges.
Anyone know if StarFraud-"protected" games require full Admin privs to run? I'd never buy any game protected by that travesty, but I'm still curious.
The software doesn't make a call to the registry or other software settings. The software makes a call to the hard coded cpuid. To get around that, need to a) hack the processor; or b) hack the software making the call.
Would there be a way to run the software through an emulation layer that catches such calls and sends back false information, or would such a call always go directly through the hardware?
I find it difficult to trust the validity of a challenge regarding the theory of evolution presented by someone who clearly does not understand its scope. Kent Hovind states that evolution makes claims as to how time and space itself came to exist, however the theory makes no such claims at all. Given that Hovind is clearly woefully ignorant of the scope of the theory of evolution despite ample information freely available on the subject, I find it difficult to believe that his challenge is an honest one.
If something as complex as humans can evolve on their own, then how many years do we have to wait for something simple to evolve on it's own....Light bulb....telephone.....pencil....Microsoft Windows....Ice Cream.....Chocolate Milk.
This is what is known as a "false analogy". You are comparing the "complexity" of entities that are known to make imperfect copies of themselves with entities that do not. As one of the main mechanisms behind evolution is this imperfect self-replication, you cannot make this comparison as a comment on the theory of evolution.
Drinking the Water of Life would restore your sword-weilding ability even in the abscence of blue bubbles.
Also, I don't recall any labrynth without any blue bubbles at all. Some of them had the blues appearing very, very rarely, but IIRC there were blues in all dungeons.
I've had Zelda since just after they re-released the gold cart with the warning to hold "Reset" while turning the power off at the savegame screen (the second release, apparently, as my cousin's version did not have such a warning), but I only completed the second quest a few years ago.
Evolution tries to apply to living systems what applies nowhere else -- namely that systems left to themselves become more complex, rather than breaking down into simpler components.
But it's already working based upon an already observed phenomenon: life forms self replicate. And I'd think that one life form of any kind is less complex than two of the same kind of life form. You can go on about how DNA is "information", but 1) you'll have to demonstrate that DNA is in some way designed and 2) you'll have to explain why DNA replicating imperfectly cannot produce evolution. It seems as though you're clutching on to the trappings of thermodynamics and insisting that evolution violates it based upon claims that would seem to put existing observed events at odds with your interpretation of thermodynamics, so you invent excuses to justify the events that are actually observed while still dismissing evolution.
Are you capable of considering that you just might be mistaken about the implications of thermodynamics? Could you perhaps try to explain why it is impossible for multicellular structures to emerge through copying errors rather than just asserting it as being impossible?
Interesting Wiki entry. This particular bit caught my eye:
"As stated above, when discussing entropy, the term disorder does not necessarily mean disorganization. Many textbooks utilize a bedroom as an example of a hypothetical system in which disorganization is spontaneously increasing, and those textbooks say this is an example of entropy. A statement like this must be carefully made or else it can be misleading. For example, if all of the socks in the room were in perfect rows in a drawer, would that configuration have less entropy than if the socks were strewn about the room? The answer is to be found in the Shannon definition of entropy. One must ask "how many distinct ways can socks be folded in the drawers", and "how many different ways can they be strewn about the room"? If these questions can be answered objectively, then the configuration with the most possibilities (probably the socks strewn about the room) would have the highest entropy, although this entropy would not be true thermodynamic entropy, but it would qualify as a type of information entropy."
The Second Law of Thermodynamics, that principle that states that entropy always increases in a closed system, refers specifically to thermodynamic entropy (hence it being a law of thermodynamics). I recall you using examples about an arrangement of books in a room. That would pretty much make your example an invalid analogy, since you couldn't possibly connect that to thermodynamic entropy.
It would appear then that you are applying the Second Law of Thermodynamics to information entropy. It also appears that you're trying to apply information entropy -- which relates to systems of human-defined concepts of "order" (such as words in a type of language) to molecular structures. But humans don't define molecular structures, so your application is clearly invalid.
Tell me, why do you think that the world's biologists haven't considered your "brilliant" observations regarding "entropy loss" as evidence that evolution is false? You'd think that with literally thousands of biologists around the world, someone somewhere would recognize this apparently obvious principle.
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Does anyone else suffer from "Once you go MMORPG you can never go back" syndrome?
No. World of Warcraft could never hold my interest, and both Morrowind and now Oblivion have distracted me significantly from my active City of Heroes/Villains subscription.
Dell is selling the 2407, but only in Japan.
I was recently informed that the 2407 is available, but only in Japan. I did have a link to the Dell Japan page, but I have unfortunately since lost it.
I am not the previous poster, however I also use a Dell 2405 FPW.
What kind of resolution do you run the games at?
In general, I run at native whenever possible. If I am playing a game where the native resolution is too taxing for my video card which is a Nvidia GeForce 6800GT, I drop the resolution to 1680x1050, which is also a 16:10 resolution. I have noticed very little loss of image quality as a result of the non-native resolution.
When running Quake 4 or Doom 3, I run at 1280x1024 and use the game's built in 16:10 resolution rendering option.
If native, are you running any FPS games?
I run a great number of FPS games myself. My biggest problem has been with games that do not well support 16:10 resolutions. Surprisingly, I have been able to obtain such display output from even older games, such as Deus Ex, though in some cases this requires manually modifying configuration files. With other games, however, I have discovered that native 16:10 resolutions are unfortunately completely unsupported or -- in a few cases -- the games attempt to scale output at such resolutions to match a 4:3 aspect ratio regardless. I have noticed this with the Grand Theft Auto games and with Lithtech engine games.
I looked at their site and I don't see a response time listed for the monitor which is usually not a good thing.
I had heard some reports regarding poor gaming performance, however my experience with computer games, with GameCube games running via component and with Dreamcast games running through VGA has been fully satisfactory. I am not aware of the exact response time of the display, however I have noticed no ghosting during any gameplay. One forum post elsewhere suggested that poor image quality in gaming is remedied through adjusting the monitor refresh rates when running at lower resolutions.
Also, will it support 1600x1200 without streching (meaning, just have two black bars left and right of the screen)?
The 2405FPW supports three view modes when not displaying the native resolution of 1920x1200 (which is a widescreen resolution, though I have encountered a few games -- such as Lithtech engine games that horizontally compress images at this resolution): fill, which stretches the image to fill the display; 1:1, which displays the image at a 1:1 pixel ratio, showing a smaller screen surrounded by a large black border of unused pixels; and aspect, which scales the image to fill as much of the monitor as possible while preserving the aspect ratio, using black bars as borders on the sides or -- for 1080i or 720p input -- at the top and bottom.
The one drawback that I have encountered is that the monitor is a 16:10 aspect ratio screen, however it offers no option to fit 480p or 480i input to a 16:9 aspect ratio. This means that I cannot use the "widescreen" option on GameCube games. Also, were I to use a progressive scan DVD player with the unit, I would require a unit that upscales the output image to a high definition resolution of 1080i or 720p, as the native aspect ratio would then properly be displayed as 16:9. I have not tested the device with 480i input flagged as anamorphic (as would be output from a non-progressive scan DVD player set to display a 16:9 image for DVDs so encoded), however.
A crystal is nothing more than a repeating structure of atoms arranged by the "shape" of the atoms.
I am aware of this. However, crystal formation creates structures corresponding to a complex "pattern", which -- according to your interpretation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics -- is impossible. I would suggest that it is your understanding of the Second Law that is in error, rather than a case of every biologist on the planet simply not considering fundamental chemistry.
How did it "evolve" to have such a huge dynamic range of light?
Very simply. Biological photoreceptor structures that could not handle such a dynamic range resulted in the organism with such structures not surviving to reproduce.
If man cannot duplicate the performance of such structures by intelligent efforts, you expect me to believe they came about by chance?
You are appealing to incredulity, and you are also demonstrating a lack of understanding of the process of evolution. While mutation and environmental shifts are themselves "random" events, the result of natural selection is not "random", and is what creates the specialized structures found in living organisms. The result is that a diverse number of structures can come to exist, but only a select few will remain in existence for a significant length of time. Human development techniques do not tend to use such a process, because such processes are cost-prohibitive.
How can I be trolling when I'm presenting only the facts? I'm only saying Wikipedia says so and so, and Kent Hovind says so and so.
To be fair, it is difficult to distinguish between an act of trolling and mere repetition of Kent Hovind's claims.
When I asked him what was wrong, he said, "We can't exist. It's all too complex for us to be alive." I just smiled at him.
I believe that this is known as "argument from incredulity".
To bring all this around to the start of this paragraph, the clincher for me as to my view on Creationism now comes from Christ's own words.
So you are saying that your lack of acceptance of a well-established scientific theory is not based upon inadequacies with the evidence, but rather your interpretation of an unrelated religious text?
Except, of course, that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is of recent origin, an attempt to ridicule any theistic belief.
Curious. The Flying Spaghetti Monster was created as a means of mocking the "Intelligent Design" movement. Are you saying that the proponents of Intelligent Design, who state that ID is not religious in nature, are lying?
Nobody goes to hell for not believing in evolution.
Are you certain of this?
As a matter of fact, I don't know of any EXPERIMENT that was ever done to show how simple parts self assemble into more complex systems.
Apparently you are unaware of crystal formations or, for that matter, the emergence of multicellular organisms from zygote form.
It is you that doesn't understand the second law. The principle of entropy has far wider applicability than only thermodynamics.
Then perhaps you could cite a peer reviewed scientific article that comes to the conclusion that complex systems cannot form.
Hmm. An e-mail spammer demonstrates that he is a lowlife scumbag who deserves to be killed.
Why is this considered news?
All e-mail spammers should be tortured to death. I don't need an incident like this to prove it.
Shell scripts that contain previously unknown root exploits?
Actually, most of the attachments are Windows executables without any "exploits". They take advantage of the fact that quite a few idiots run as Administrator all the time.
So, you are saying, that if someone creates a theory that is so sound proof, so accurate, so factual that it cannot be falsified it ceases to become science?
No. What is said is that it is impossible for an explanation conforming to the scientific method to ever satisfy your given criteria.
I think there was only one other early in the series where Q had given him real eyes for a short time.
Actually, this was Commander Riker, who had been temporarily endowed with the abilities of the Q.
Mind you, this theory is shot to hell by the final episode of TNG, where he has to remove his VISOR because his "visual cortex is falling out of alignment" or something.
I believe that you are referring to Star Trek: Insurrection where a regenerative field surrounding the planet featured in the movie causes Geordi's optic nerves to regenerate and restore his ability to see.
It should be noted, however, that Geordi was not wearing the VISOR at the time, and had switched to ocular implants directly on the eyes. Such ocular implants had been mentioned previously in the television series as early as season 2, however Geordi declined to use them as they resulted in 20% less visual acutiy as his VISOR. Presumably the technology in such implants improved to such a point to make them equal or superior to the VISOR by the time of Star Trek: First Contact.
Note that the events of Star Trek: Insurrection were apparently not permanent, as Geordi was wearing his ocular implants in Star Trek: Nemesis. This movie also suggests that Data's emotion chip was no longer in existence either, as the android never shows any sign of emotion during the movie.
3. Run a good hardware and software anti-virus and firewall system. This means not letting every employee and their cousin having admin access to their machines.
You wouldn't believe the hell I had to go through to implement a policy like this. And the resistance came from other employees in the tech department, not from the faculty themselves. I would set up computers with standard User level accounts, and the instant a user needed some obscure software package installed, one of the tech support heads would walk them through the process of MAKING THEIR ACCOUNT ADMINISTRATOR LEVEL by having them log in via our tech admin accounts and changing their user account setting.
Of course, he didn't want them downgrading their account back to user level. He thought that this made tech support much easier, because users wouldn't have to come to us to install software. Apparently he didn't think the problem we had of having to wipe user machines every two months (at least) after the latest trojan outbreak was related.
Sometimes the "enemy" is the idiot in your tech support department.
It's pretty stupid that every game I buy I have to find, download, and install a no cd crack. This opens me up to security issues just so that I can play my game
This isn't too big an issue if you only run the games under a standard user account rather than an account with full Administrator privledges.
One of the main reasons I download CD cracks is so that I don't have to run games in the Admin mode that many CD checks demand, though -- to the credit of the companies producing that garbate -- more and more CD check systems do not require full Admin privledges.
Anyone know if StarFraud-"protected" games require full Admin privs to run? I'd never buy any game protected by that travesty, but I'm still curious.
The software doesn't make a call to the registry or other software settings. The software makes a call to the hard coded cpuid. To get around that, need to a) hack the processor; or b) hack the software making the call.
Would there be a way to run the software through an emulation layer that catches such calls and sends back false information, or would such a call always go directly through the hardware?
I find it difficult to trust the validity of a challenge regarding the theory of evolution presented by someone who clearly does not understand its scope. Kent Hovind states that evolution makes claims as to how time and space itself came to exist, however the theory makes no such claims at all. Given that Hovind is clearly woefully ignorant of the scope of the theory of evolution despite ample information freely available on the subject, I find it difficult to believe that his challenge is an honest one.
If something as complex as humans can evolve on their own, then how many years do we have to wait for something simple to evolve on it's own....Light bulb....telephone.....pencil....Microsoft Windows....Ice Cream.....Chocolate Milk.
This is what is known as a "false analogy". You are comparing the "complexity" of entities that are known to make imperfect copies of themselves with entities that do not. As one of the main mechanisms behind evolution is this imperfect self-replication, you cannot make this comparison as a comment on the theory of evolution.
Drinking the Water of Life would restore your sword-weilding ability even in the abscence of blue bubbles.
Also, I don't recall any labrynth without any blue bubbles at all. Some of them had the blues appearing very, very rarely, but IIRC there were blues in all dungeons.
I've had Zelda since just after they re-released the gold cart with the warning to hold "Reset" while turning the power off at the savegame screen (the second release, apparently, as my cousin's version did not have such a warning), but I only completed the second quest a few years ago.
Evolution tries to apply to living systems what applies nowhere else -- namely that systems left to themselves become more complex, rather than breaking down into simpler components.
But it's already working based upon an already observed phenomenon: life forms self replicate. And I'd think that one life form of any kind is less complex than two of the same kind of life form. You can go on about how DNA is "information", but 1) you'll have to demonstrate that DNA is in some way designed and 2) you'll have to explain why DNA replicating imperfectly cannot produce evolution. It seems as though you're clutching on to the trappings of thermodynamics and insisting that evolution violates it based upon claims that would seem to put existing observed events at odds with your interpretation of thermodynamics, so you invent excuses to justify the events that are actually observed while still dismissing evolution.
Are you capable of considering that you just might be mistaken about the implications of thermodynamics? Could you perhaps try to explain why it is impossible for multicellular structures to emerge through copying errors rather than just asserting it as being impossible?
Interesting Wiki entry. This particular bit caught my eye:
"As stated above, when discussing entropy, the term disorder does not necessarily mean disorganization. Many textbooks utilize a bedroom as an example of a hypothetical system in which disorganization is spontaneously increasing, and those textbooks say this is an example of entropy. A statement like this must be carefully made or else it can be misleading. For example, if all of the socks in the room were in perfect rows in a drawer, would that configuration have less entropy than if the socks were strewn about the room? The answer is to be found in the Shannon definition of entropy. One must ask "how many distinct ways can socks be folded in the drawers", and "how many different ways can they be strewn about the room"? If these questions can be answered objectively, then the configuration with the most possibilities (probably the socks strewn about the room) would have the highest entropy, although this entropy would not be true thermodynamic entropy, but it would qualify as a type of information entropy."
The Second Law of Thermodynamics, that principle that states that entropy always increases in a closed system, refers specifically to thermodynamic entropy (hence it being a law of thermodynamics). I recall you using examples about an arrangement of books in a room. That would pretty much make your example an invalid analogy, since you couldn't possibly connect that to thermodynamic entropy.
It would appear then that you are applying the Second Law of Thermodynamics to information entropy. It also appears that you're trying to apply information entropy -- which relates to systems of human-defined concepts of "order" (such as words in a type of language) to molecular structures. But humans don't define molecular structures, so your application is clearly invalid.
Tell me, why do you think that the world's biologists haven't considered your "brilliant" observations regarding "entropy loss" as evidence that evolution is false? You'd think that with literally thousands of biologists around the world, someone somewhere would recognize this apparently obvious principle.
So please explain why the Second Law of Thermodynamics does not include any requirement of information input to decrease entropy?