"The 'video game community' surely seems exercised about someone who is a 'joke' and who is accomplishing nothing. You all seem rather bothered and worried about a nonentity. God is in this battle, and I am privileged to be a foot soldier. You all should be concerned, not about me, but about Him." -JT
"God is very powerful, and He's not real pleased with Rockstar right now, nor with those who defend it. Watch out. Fire and brimstone on the way."
"Actually, the people who have cashed in on the deaths is Rockstar. That's why God and I are going to destroy them. Thanks for writing."
"The 'video game community' surely seems exercised about someone who is a 'joke' and who is accomplishing nothing. You all seem rather bothered and worried about a nonentity. God is in this battle, and I am privileged to be a foot soldier. You all should be concerned, not about me, but about Him."
You can beat the game in a couple hours. The fun comes from playing it over and over again making different choices. Played that game a lot... and never did find all the endings. Storyline differs drastically based on your choices. Although the base plot of government army coming to take over the village and kill the non-peons doesn't change... what happens in the days leading up to that climatic event does.
"I remember that ATI was working on enabling this for Vista, but not sure of the status of that project."
I'm remembering something that said that ATI had found it impossible to do as well... but I'm not finding it again now. Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll figure something out and push nvidia to do the same. But after this long and still no support... I'm not too hopefull.
"Nope. MS never has said anything about the Home versions." Which would be why I'm asking... as when you look at the supported host OSes for Virtual PC 2007, no mention is made of the home versions. I'll give it a shot though and see what happens.
"Most of the utilities 'needlessly' use lower level drivers, and by them being re-written for user mode" If they can get the level of access that they need to in user-mode, then great:) It'd be good for them to do so. On a side note though... ntune... bleh.
As for fullscreen vs windowed... the link seems to be showing that having aero enabled/disabled doesn't make a meaningful impact as it's disabled when running full screen (and that variation looks to be simply noise). I still can't believe that running windowed with aero pulling resources would be faster. But I also haven't performed extensive tests either... so I'll refrain from calling you names and merely say I'm unconvinced:P
It's not just NVidia that supported horizontal span, ATI did as well.
"The game will play inside the WDDM Aero interface and actually be faster than running full screen" I'm not sure I can credit that it'll be faster running windowed than full screen. Everything I've ever dealt with runs slower windowed... and when I'm looking at running a racing sim at 3200x1200 performance is important. Do you have a source on this?
"You can also just install the XP drivers, and Vista will turn off the WDDM subsystem and use the legacy video subsystem" "It kills me that people don't realize they can just install the XP driver in Vista, and the legacy subsystem is used" This is really interesting and something I wasn't aware of. Seem's a pain to have to go through the driver uninstall/install process whenever I want to race though. (unless there's an easier way to switch?)
"Technically the AMD64/EMT64 CPU design removes 16bit abilities when running in native 64bit mode." Was unaware of this... I'll quit blaming Vista for that now.:P Would be nice if they provided emulation, but definately can't blame 'em for not. So MS is simply lying about the host OS requirements for Virtual PC to avoid supporting the home versions?
"This is only for kernel level drivers" Indeed. And there's a whole set of tools used by the enthusiast community that require such. Take a look at rivatuner for a quick example.
Also I think tools such as WinPCap at least used to be kernel level (haven't kept up with it lately, they might have redone it to not?)
You might want to check which version of the drivers you're actually running (not just which ones you have installed). If I'm remembering my experimentation right, it won't tell you that it didn't load the unsigned ones. Although, if you've found a way to actually use unsigned drivers without having to specify every time... let us know how!
As for UAC... it'd be damn useful if you were given control over what it did and didn't do (and expanded on what it does do).
Oh, I'll freely admit it's an edge case... in fact everything I brought up are edge cases. Most people with multiple monitors for instance don't have any desire to run in a span mode and wouldn't ever notice or care that it isn't supported. Most people don't run 16-bit apps anymore. Most people don't care about non-signed drivers.
I'd be willing to posit that most of the issues anyone has with Vista are edge cases... however there's enough of them that if you deviate at all from the "norm" you're likely to hit some as I did.
I simply listed the ones that I've hit that I've found painful. Luckily for me, a dual-boot solution solves most of my issues... but I shouldn't need to do that.
Just to help keep your viewpoint balanced... there's negative features in Vista as well (especially the 64-bit version).
Here's the ones that I've run into as being major issues in my 4-5 months with Vista. There's others, but I either haven't personally run into them, or they're not particularly painful.
1) Vista removed support for horizontal or vertical span modes with a multi-monitor setup. (well, more of they changed things up so that it's impossible for drivers supporting that to be written) If you're not aware of these modes, horizontal span mode for example allowed your software to treat your collection of displays as one really wide display... so a full-screen racing or flight sim would span all your displays not just one. XP supported this. Vista doesn't. Meaning that if I want to have a decent racing sim setup I've got to go back to XP. This is an issue with both 32 and 64 bit versions. There's a lot of speculation that it's related to the integrated DRM stuff Vista includes.
2) The 64-bit version of Vista removes backwards compatability for 16-bit applications. I dunno about you, but sometimes I get nostalgic for the games I grew up with... and some of those games are good enough that horrible dated graphics don't matter.
3) The 64-bit version of Vista requires you to specify EVERY TIME YOU BOOT that you want to use unsigned drivers. (You used to be able to specify in the mbr to always use them, but MS released at least 2 critical updates that disabled that) Perhaps this isn't an issue for the average Joe, but there's a decent number of aps out there that I use that utilize an unsigned driver. Then there's beta releases of video card drivers and the like.
Long story short, I'm currently awaiting a new harddrive that's going to be a XP drive so that I can continue to use the functionality I should have. Vista may have improvements, but to me it's offset by the functionality they removed.
As to why I'm not moving back to XP entirely? 64-bit Vista is actually a usable 64-bit OS. (64-bit XP never was really supported by hardware manufacturers) And there's DX10 which will, sometime, maybe, be a reason.
Interesting thing is what happens when you stop looking at synthetic benchmarks... and start looking at real gameplay.
Take a read through hardocp's review for an example.
As to why AMD released? Well, my understanding is that NVidia is looking to release thier own 2-GPU card (9800 GX2) in Feb/March. Given the benchmarks of the current cards, I can't see the 3870 X2 holding up well... so... beat 'em to market. Although when you factor price in, I'd imagine it'll still be competitive; just not anywhere near the fastest.
What I'm waiting to see come out from AMD is the R700 cards... especially if it convinces nvidia to finally release thier true next-gen cards as well (not merely the continued tweaking/shrinking of the G80 architecture). Then we can all have something to look forward to:)
Well... I'm most definately not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that this type of format shifting was endorsed as fair use by the judge who ruled in RIAA vs Diamond (over the Rio)
I'm thinking that you're not understanding what Comcast is doing. (Given your choice of examples)
Lets look at what happens with WoW updates.
Lets say that you're one of the first one's trying to do a WoW update, so your updater (which uses bittorrent) contacts Blizzard's servers. Comcast then sends you a packet pretending to be from Blizzard saying that Blizzard doesn't want to talk to you.
My speculation would be that he's refering to something in the anti-spam laws that make it illegal to forge who an electronic communication (in this case the RST packet) is from. Impersonation of a third party for arguably malicious purposes... mmm... sounds like something that could well be illegal to me.
Like you however I am interested in hearing what statutes would apply... I'm just more convinced that those statutes are out there.
My desire is (in short) that people are free to do as they choose as long as thier choices only affect themselves... when your choices start affecting others your choices should be restricted (who restricts and to what degree for what level of affectation I'm not going to get into...)
Anyways, as for hurting people when high... if I'm making bad choices in how/when/where I'm doing drugs so that I'm placing others at risk, then punish me for that. If I'm responsible and get high in an environment where I'm not going to harm others, why punish me?
We've already got this approach with alcohol... it's not illegal to drink... it is illegal to drink and drive.
As for breeding crime, I'd argue that having drugs illegal contributes more than if they were legally available, but that's a whole nother topic to get into.
Hmm... you've got an interesting way of deciding which freedoms to support. Anyways...
One of my best friends barely survived a drug OD; he spent days in a coma. As a result of years of drugs abuse he now hears voices and has suffered horrible memory loss. Currently I don't even know if he's alive any more... it's rather hard to keep up when he's moved out of state and doesn't have anything even resembling a permanent address.
He made his choices, and while they're not the ones I would have made, it's not my place to tell him what he can and can't do TO HIMSELF. That is his decision, and his decision alone. I feel bad that I couldn't convince him not to follow that path... but I don't feel bad that I didn't force him off of it. That'd be akin to slavery; it's not my place to force him to live as I wish.
Oh, I'm not even a liberatian... although I do agree with some of thier positions. (But then I agree with some Republican and some Democratic positions as well)
"It would be nice to have a powerful video card that doesn't need too much noisy refrigeration."
Powerful video card? Try a 8800 GT. Want it quiet? Try swapping out the cooler for an Accelero S1 passive heatsink. It will run much significantly cooler than the stock active cooling solution... and if you want to get fancy (and really drop your temps), attach a low-speed 120mm (ie, nice and quiet) fan to it.
If you pay attention to noise when designing your system, you should be fine. I've got a completely air-cooled system that my current project is to try to figure out how to do something about the noise my optical drives make as they're by far the loudest components. (Well... when I've got a disc spun-up at least)
Things to look at when designing your system.
1) Case... the most important choice! Rather than building a quiet enclosure, look at purchasing a case with noise dampening qualities. Take a look at Antec's P182 as an example (what I'm using). It has noise dampening panels, vibration isolation mounts for your drives, and is designed for the use of low-speed 120mm (meaning quiet) fans. It's also designed to have good airflow properties. Yes it's more than a $30 aluminum sheet metal case, but it also isn't going to rattle like one.
2) Power supply... your power supply has a built-in cooling solution that unless you're doing the watercooling route you're really not going to be able to modify (if it's made to use a high-speed 60mm fan, good luck fitting a low-speed 120 in there...) However, if you keep noise in mind when you're selecting your psu, you can find quiet units (even passively cooled if you're willing to pay for it). Personally I find the hx520 quiet enough (has a 120mm intake fan, so the supply itself serves as a buffer between the fan and the outside of your case)
3) Fans! Use large low-speed fans for moving air through your case! When you're looking to buy a fan, the two important numbers are cfm and dB. Where you draw the airflow/noise balance is up to you, personally I aim for the highest cfm rating I can get while staying under 20dB. (Coolermaster sells a 120mm fan that moves 44 cfm of air for a bit under 20dB...) The 3 120mm fans that ship with the p182 when set on low are also below 20dB.
4) Examine the cooling solutions on your CPU and GPU (possibly other components as well if they have an active cooling solution... for example the northbridge on select motherboards). I've found the stock intel cooler to be pretty quiet on the C2Ds, however, there are passive solutions. For your GPU, again, there are passive solutions, although the stock solutions aren't that bad.
5) And... where I'm stuck. Find quiet drives. I have noticed that there's a significant difference in how loud my two optical drives are... I'm sure that I could find drives quieter than what I have. Same with harddrives. Currently, these make for the loudest components in my case.
Alternatively, you could go the watercooling route, if you do that it's all about selecting a quiet pump and having a large radiator (you could go large enough to cool passively, or simply large enough to use large, low-speed fans). Water cooling should allow you to have a nearly silent cooling setup. It'd also allow you to go nuts and use your enclosure around an already quiet case with just a passive radiator external.
Just on a side note, a first name can be too much to give out.
For instance years back I wound up urgently needing to get ahold of an online friend. I only knew his first name (a common one... Bryan), but I also knew the IP addresses that he'd used over the past couple months (we were both semi-admins on the same site). Me and another online friend spent a couple hours, did a bit of social engineering (none of the illegal kind), and obtained his full name, address, and phone number.
It doesn't take much to have your veil of anonymity pierced.
"Playing them produces nothing of value and is only useful for relieving stress or boredom"
One of the people I know in FFXI made around $3000 this past summer by selling off excess gil (in-game currency) he had.
I think he's now amassed a similar amount of gil and is thinking of selling it off as well.
He's not playing to amass gil to sell, rather he plays to try to figure out the crafting system... and just happens to make a lot of gil while doing so.
We used the lego-mindstorms in my grad-level robotics class. We were using a C compiler for them (think it, and the OS we were loading were open source even), and as long as you remembered that you didn't have any floating point... (i.e., 5/2*2 would be 4 not 5...) and that you had very limited stack space with no protection (use more than 1k stack and you were overwriting your heap...) you could do pretty much whatever you wanted. For example we were doing onboard inverse kinematics and pathfinding algorithms. Then you add in the ability to talk to them... and you start being able to get them to perform cooperative tasks.
What I found most interesting about them was due to thier "legotastic" nature, it become very apparent how much influence the physical design has on your software design... and how difficult software problems could be changed with minor hardware tweaks and vice-versa. Having the ability to modify the physical design of the robot taught a *lot* more than merely being able to work with software did (as some work we later did with some Aibo's showed).
Slashdot Mirror
"The 'video game community' surely seems exercised about someone who is a 'joke' and who is accomplishing nothing. You all seem rather bothered and worried about a nonentity. God is in this battle, and I am privileged to be a foot soldier. You all should be concerned, not about me, but about Him." -JT
Naw... there's no religious roots there...
"God is very powerful, and He's not real pleased with Rockstar right now, nor with those who defend it. Watch out. Fire and brimstone on the way."
"Actually, the people who have cashed in on the deaths is Rockstar. That's why God and I are going to destroy them. Thanks for writing."
"The 'video game community' surely seems exercised about someone who is a 'joke' and who is accomplishing nothing. You all seem rather bothered and worried about a nonentity. God is in this battle, and I am privileged to be a foot soldier. You all should be concerned, not about me, but about Him."
Need I go on?
PS2 game... Way of the Samurai
You can beat the game in a couple hours. The fun comes from playing it over and over again making different choices. Played that game a lot... and never did find all the endings. Storyline differs drastically based on your choices. Although the base plot of government army coming to take over the village and kill the non-peons doesn't change... what happens in the days leading up to that climatic event does.
"Cyber-bullying can be almost as hurtful to a child as verbal face-to-face bullying, IMO, and should be treated in the same way"
You mean completely and utterly ignored?
"I remember that ATI was working on enabling this for Vista, but not sure of the status of that project."
:) It'd be good for them to do so. On a side note though... ntune... bleh.
:P
I'm remembering something that said that ATI had found it impossible to do as well... but I'm not finding it again now. Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll figure something out and push nvidia to do the same. But after this long and still no support... I'm not too hopefull.
"Nope. MS never has said anything about the Home versions."
Which would be why I'm asking... as when you look at the supported host OSes for Virtual PC 2007, no mention is made of the home versions. I'll give it a shot though and see what happens.
"Most of the utilities 'needlessly' use lower level drivers, and by them being re-written for user mode"
If they can get the level of access that they need to in user-mode, then great
As for fullscreen vs windowed... the link seems to be showing that having aero enabled/disabled doesn't make a meaningful impact as it's disabled when running full screen (and that variation looks to be simply noise). I still can't believe that running windowed with aero pulling resources would be faster. But I also haven't performed extensive tests either... so I'll refrain from calling you names and merely say I'm unconvinced
Few comments...
:P Would be nice if they provided emulation, but definately can't blame 'em for not. So MS is simply lying about the host OS requirements for Virtual PC to avoid supporting the home versions?
:)
It's not just NVidia that supported horizontal span, ATI did as well.
"The game will play inside the WDDM Aero interface and actually be faster than running full screen"
I'm not sure I can credit that it'll be faster running windowed than full screen. Everything I've ever dealt with runs slower windowed... and when I'm looking at running a racing sim at 3200x1200 performance is important. Do you have a source on this?
"You can also just install the XP drivers, and Vista will turn off the WDDM subsystem and use the legacy video subsystem"
"It kills me that people don't realize they can just install the XP driver in Vista, and the legacy subsystem is used"
This is really interesting and something I wasn't aware of. Seem's a pain to have to go through the driver uninstall/install process whenever I want to race though. (unless there's an easier way to switch?)
"Technically the AMD64/EMT64 CPU design removes 16bit abilities when running in native 64bit mode."
Was unaware of this... I'll quit blaming Vista for that now.
"This is only for kernel level drivers"
Indeed. And there's a whole set of tools used by the enthusiast community that require such. Take a look at rivatuner for a quick example.
Also I think tools such as WinPCap at least used to be kernel level (haven't kept up with it lately, they might have redone it to not?)
Thanks for the info though!
You might want to check which version of the drivers you're actually running (not just which ones you have installed). If I'm remembering my experimentation right, it won't tell you that it didn't load the unsigned ones. Although, if you've found a way to actually use unsigned drivers without having to specify every time... let us know how!
As for UAC... it'd be damn useful if you were given control over what it did and didn't do (and expanded on what it does do).
Oh, I'll freely admit it's an edge case... in fact everything I brought up are edge cases. Most people with multiple monitors for instance don't have any desire to run in a span mode and wouldn't ever notice or care that it isn't supported. Most people don't run 16-bit apps anymore. Most people don't care about non-signed drivers.
I'd be willing to posit that most of the issues anyone has with Vista are edge cases... however there's enough of them that if you deviate at all from the "norm" you're likely to hit some as I did.
I simply listed the ones that I've hit that I've found painful. Luckily for me, a dual-boot solution solves most of my issues... but I shouldn't need to do that.
Just to help keep your viewpoint balanced... there's negative features in Vista as well (especially the 64-bit version).
Here's the ones that I've run into as being major issues in my 4-5 months with Vista. There's others, but I either haven't personally run into them, or they're not particularly painful.
1) Vista removed support for horizontal or vertical span modes with a multi-monitor setup. (well, more of they changed things up so that it's impossible for drivers supporting that to be written) If you're not aware of these modes, horizontal span mode for example allowed your software to treat your collection of displays as one really wide display... so a full-screen racing or flight sim would span all your displays not just one. XP supported this. Vista doesn't. Meaning that if I want to have a decent racing sim setup I've got to go back to XP. This is an issue with both 32 and 64 bit versions. There's a lot of speculation that it's related to the integrated DRM stuff Vista includes.
2) The 64-bit version of Vista removes backwards compatability for 16-bit applications. I dunno about you, but sometimes I get nostalgic for the games I grew up with... and some of those games are good enough that horrible dated graphics don't matter.
3) The 64-bit version of Vista requires you to specify EVERY TIME YOU BOOT that you want to use unsigned drivers. (You used to be able to specify in the mbr to always use them, but MS released at least 2 critical updates that disabled that) Perhaps this isn't an issue for the average Joe, but there's a decent number of aps out there that I use that utilize an unsigned driver. Then there's beta releases of video card drivers and the like.
Long story short, I'm currently awaiting a new harddrive that's going to be a XP drive so that I can continue to use the functionality I should have. Vista may have improvements, but to me it's offset by the functionality they removed.
As to why I'm not moving back to XP entirely? 64-bit Vista is actually a usable 64-bit OS. (64-bit XP never was really supported by hardware manufacturers) And there's DX10 which will, sometime, maybe, be a reason.
Interesting thing is what happens when you stop looking at synthetic benchmarks... and start looking at real gameplay.
:)
Take a read through hardocp's review for an example.
As to why AMD released? Well, my understanding is that NVidia is looking to release thier own 2-GPU card (9800 GX2) in Feb/March. Given the benchmarks of the current cards, I can't see the 3870 X2 holding up well... so... beat 'em to market. Although when you factor price in, I'd imagine it'll still be competitive; just not anywhere near the fastest.
What I'm waiting to see come out from AMD is the R700 cards... especially if it convinces nvidia to finally release thier true next-gen cards as well (not merely the continued tweaking/shrinking of the G80 architecture). Then we can all have something to look forward to
Well... I'm most definately not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that this type of format shifting was endorsed as fair use by the judge who ruled in RIAA vs Diamond (over the Rio)
very different styles than the stuff I listen to... I'm more into The Muses
Interesting stuff though... wasn't aware there was enough of a demand for this kind of thing for the RIAA to care.
"I'm hard pressed to think of a genre of music that doesn't have at least one or two prominent bands/artists signed to RIAA members."
I haven't run across a single group doing Celtic music that's signed to a major label...
Although my tastes even in this niche genre seem to be rather narrow, so who knows, maybe some of the more mainstream groups have XD
The service being there or not isn't the issue.
The issue is that comcast is pretending to be the 3rd party.
I'm thinking that you're not understanding what Comcast is doing. (Given your choice of examples)
Lets look at what happens with WoW updates.
Lets say that you're one of the first one's trying to do a WoW update, so your updater (which uses bittorrent) contacts Blizzard's servers. Comcast then sends you a packet pretending to be from Blizzard saying that Blizzard doesn't want to talk to you.
That's forgery.
My speculation would be that he's refering to something in the anti-spam laws that make it illegal to forge who an electronic communication (in this case the RST packet) is from. Impersonation of a third party for arguably malicious purposes... mmm... sounds like something that could well be illegal to me.
Like you however I am interested in hearing what statutes would apply... I'm just more convinced that those statutes are out there.
My desire is (in short) that people are free to do as they choose as long as thier choices only affect themselves... when your choices start affecting others your choices should be restricted (who restricts and to what degree for what level of affectation I'm not going to get into...)
Anyways, as for hurting people when high... if I'm making bad choices in how/when/where I'm doing drugs so that I'm placing others at risk, then punish me for that. If I'm responsible and get high in an environment where I'm not going to harm others, why punish me?
We've already got this approach with alcohol... it's not illegal to drink... it is illegal to drink and drive.
As for breeding crime, I'd argue that having drugs illegal contributes more than if they were legally available, but that's a whole nother topic to get into.
Hmm... you've got an interesting way of deciding which freedoms to support. Anyways...
One of my best friends barely survived a drug OD; he spent days in a coma. As a result of years of drugs abuse he now hears voices and has suffered horrible memory loss. Currently I don't even know if he's alive any more... it's rather hard to keep up when he's moved out of state and doesn't have anything even resembling a permanent address.
He made his choices, and while they're not the ones I would have made, it's not my place to tell him what he can and can't do TO HIMSELF. That is his decision, and his decision alone. I feel bad that I couldn't convince him not to follow that path... but I don't feel bad that I didn't force him off of it. That'd be akin to slavery; it's not my place to force him to live as I wish.
Oh, I'm not even a liberatian... although I do agree with some of thier positions. (But then I agree with some Republican and some Democratic positions as well)
"It would be nice to have a powerful video card that doesn't need too much noisy refrigeration."
Powerful video card? Try a 8800 GT. Want it quiet? Try swapping out the cooler for an Accelero S1 passive heatsink. It will run much significantly cooler than the stock active cooling solution... and if you want to get fancy (and really drop your temps), attach a low-speed 120mm (ie, nice and quiet) fan to it.
If you pay attention to noise when designing your system, you should be fine. I've got a completely air-cooled system that my current project is to try to figure out how to do something about the noise my optical drives make as they're by far the loudest components. (Well... when I've got a disc spun-up at least)
Things to look at when designing your system.
1) Case... the most important choice! Rather than building a quiet enclosure, look at purchasing a case with noise dampening qualities. Take a look at Antec's P182 as an example (what I'm using). It has noise dampening panels, vibration isolation mounts for your drives, and is designed for the use of low-speed 120mm (meaning quiet) fans. It's also designed to have good airflow properties. Yes it's more than a $30 aluminum sheet metal case, but it also isn't going to rattle like one.
2) Power supply... your power supply has a built-in cooling solution that unless you're doing the watercooling route you're really not going to be able to modify (if it's made to use a high-speed 60mm fan, good luck fitting a low-speed 120 in there...) However, if you keep noise in mind when you're selecting your psu, you can find quiet units (even passively cooled if you're willing to pay for it). Personally I find the hx520 quiet enough (has a 120mm intake fan, so the supply itself serves as a buffer between the fan and the outside of your case)
3) Fans! Use large low-speed fans for moving air through your case! When you're looking to buy a fan, the two important numbers are cfm and dB. Where you draw the airflow/noise balance is up to you, personally I aim for the highest cfm rating I can get while staying under 20dB. (Coolermaster sells a 120mm fan that moves 44 cfm of air for a bit under 20dB...) The 3 120mm fans that ship with the p182 when set on low are also below 20dB.
4) Examine the cooling solutions on your CPU and GPU (possibly other components as well if they have an active cooling solution... for example the northbridge on select motherboards). I've found the stock intel cooler to be pretty quiet on the C2Ds, however, there are passive solutions. For your GPU, again, there are passive solutions, although the stock solutions aren't that bad.
5) And... where I'm stuck. Find quiet drives. I have noticed that there's a significant difference in how loud my two optical drives are... I'm sure that I could find drives quieter than what I have. Same with harddrives. Currently, these make for the loudest components in my case.
Alternatively, you could go the watercooling route, if you do that it's all about selecting a quiet pump and having a large radiator (you could go large enough to cool passively, or simply large enough to use large, low-speed fans). Water cooling should allow you to have a nearly silent cooling setup. It'd also allow you to go nuts and use your enclosure around an already quiet case with just a passive radiator external.
Anything that needs lots and lots of Ram will benefit from the 64-bit flavor of Vista.
65-bit XP is pretty horrible when it comes to driver support.
Just on a side note, a first name can be too much to give out.
For instance years back I wound up urgently needing to get ahold of an online friend. I only knew his first name (a common one... Bryan), but I also knew the IP addresses that he'd used over the past couple months (we were both semi-admins on the same site). Me and another online friend spent a couple hours, did a bit of social engineering (none of the illegal kind), and obtained his full name, address, and phone number.
It doesn't take much to have your veil of anonymity pierced.
Well, the point you were making was that playing a game produced nothing of value. If you're wanting to focus solely on offline games...
I got extra when selling my SNES cartridge of chrono cross because it had a saved game with maxed level characters.
"Playing them produces nothing of value and is only useful for relieving stress or boredom"
One of the people I know in FFXI made around $3000 this past summer by selling off excess gil (in-game currency) he had.
I think he's now amassed a similar amount of gil and is thinking of selling it off as well.
He's not playing to amass gil to sell, rather he plays to try to figure out the crafting system... and just happens to make a lot of gil while doing so.
well, true... guess that's what I get for oversimplifying my example. :P
The point was just that you had unexpected effects arise due to the constraint. (Especially since the float and double keywords were still valid...)
Mmm... adult?
We used the lego-mindstorms in my grad-level robotics class. We were using a C compiler for them (think it, and the OS we were loading were open source even), and as long as you remembered that you didn't have any floating point... (i.e., 5/2*2 would be 4 not 5...) and that you had very limited stack space with no protection (use more than 1k stack and you were overwriting your heap...) you could do pretty much whatever you wanted. For example we were doing onboard inverse kinematics and pathfinding algorithms. Then you add in the ability to talk to them... and you start being able to get them to perform cooperative tasks.
What I found most interesting about them was due to thier "legotastic" nature, it become very apparent how much influence the physical design has on your software design... and how difficult software problems could be changed with minor hardware tweaks and vice-versa. Having the ability to modify the physical design of the robot taught a *lot* more than merely being able to work with software did (as some work we later did with some Aibo's showed).