I've known people who always say they're a little nervous about building a computer or cracking open that case, but truthfully, unless you're really really incompetent, it's not that hard to build a comp.
I'd recommend building one for yourself if only for freedom of choice of parts and because usually, you can use better parts while still keeping the comp at the same price level as the OEM comps.
For components, I recommend reading the multitude of reviews and articles over at sites like www.hardforum.com, www.anandtech.com, www.designtechnica.com, www.arstechnica.com, etc. It depends on your preferences, like Intel or AMD, ATi or Nvidia, etc., and some people are really diehard in favoring one over the other, so it's best to read reviews and see what would suit you best. For a gaming PC, I'd say an Athlon 64 would give you top performance. (And I'm not an AMD follower, I use mostly Intel systems and some Alphas at school, and I like ATi more than Nvidia, except in the driver department).
The dangers of picking components is that some might not mix well (like some Athlon 64 motherboards don't get along with some types of memory).
If you're still iffy about building a computer, I'd say there's no real reason to worry if you know what you're doing when working with computers.
I can imagine the crack parties going on at universities when their board of trustees decide that they want some hip and edgy building.
Trustee 1: "Hey, how can we waste a lot of money really fast?" Trustee 2: "We can hire a famous postmodern architect. Their buildings always go overbudget and run into schedule delays" Trustee 3: "A toast to postmodernism!" All: "Huzzah!"
I've seen other pomo style buildings. MIT also has that weird dorm building that looks like a cross between a sponge and a retarded sponge. Harvard has some other dorm that looks a little more normal, but still not that appealing to me.
Postmodernism: a synonym for "We like to throw legos around and see what we can make"
I had updated Windows XP except for whatever patch it was for this security hole because I had heard it caused problems. Then of course, Sasser hits and targets the security hole that I didn't patch for.
Oh, this wasn't a presentation by RFID industry guys. This was buy a group at my college that did some research on RFID.
But I think they meant total burning out, like completely destroying the RFID. But I do think that there isn't any consumer-level devices out now that can fully destroy the RFID tags.
When I listened to a presentation about RFID, the presenters said to totally destroy an RFID tag takes a machine much larger than one you could take into a Walmart without looking suspicious.
And I don't think wearing a moo moo would allow you to hide one of the devices either.
Somehow, I think we all saw this coming. While the code couldn't really do much harm by itself, since there were no art, graphics, levels, sound, etc. files in the source tree, it could've been used to do other things (easier to make hacks and keygens). I guess valve will take the time to rewrite the algorithms and such, but what else would they be doing?
And waiting another 4 months for Half Life 2? Come on Valve, I'd still buy it if you released it tomorrow.
Seriously. In the forum I frequent, a few members had seen Infinium Labs. The reason why we haven't seen anything besides renderings is that the business is actually a small rented office in a Florida mall, with a desk, computer, and a telephone.
Actually, many colleges are starting to block P2P applications from connecting to their networks or uploading and downloading files. The RIAA knows colleges are hotspots of file sharing (look at how MIT and RIT shut down their on campus Direct Connect servers), so they'd target schools first.
The schools therefore are trying to protect themselves and the students by blocking these services. My school has blocked all known P2P programs so far, kazaa, morpheus, bittorrent etc.
Isn't it ironic that this article about 'copyright protection a crime against humanity' is showing up in Wired, which is owned by Microsoft? Hello Palladium.
This is reminiscent of other some other sites that became closed content. Time Warner shutting out the public from their news won't spur increased AOL membership, it'll just make people look for alternative free sites.
For example, IGN and Gamespot, two of the largest video and electronic entertainment sites on the web, turned to exclusive content, forcing people to pay a membership fee just to see stories when they broke. Rather than getting tons of new subscribers, many (including me) went and sought alternatives than to pay just to read stuff that was elsewhere.
Come on Time Warner, information is free, share it with us.
If you think about it, in the past 25 years or so, software development has become increasingly more complex. Even though there are many more programming and scripting languages available today, more efficient than the likes of QBasic, regular C, Fortran, Cobol, etc., it really seems like software development tends further away from improvement and more towards diffculty.
Sure, one of the better innovations was the introduction of objects, but rather than drastically improving programming, it seems like it's more useful creating worthless shovelware, as people just repeatedly use objects coded by someone else, maybe add their own source code, and turn out some "software" that is barely usuable.
If SiS is going to spend millions on the 0.13 micron fab processes, they should really also attempt to make something that can compete with Ati and Nvidia's new cards.
As it stands, being able to pump out.13 micron chips seems only like it's for bragging rights, because this chip barely compares with a Radeon 9000, which (I think) is only.15 micron. But hey, maybe SiS really likes spending the money.
With this new RPG making entity, I hope both companies get out of their dry spell and bring us Chrono Trigger 3. Chrono Cross was good and all, but I really want the Akira Toriyama character designs, and since he usually designs for Enix, we might get what we want for once.
But it begs the question: Will they be called Square Enix Electronic Arts in the US and bring us football and hockey RPGS?
Slashdot Mirror
I've known people who always say they're a little nervous about building a computer or cracking open that case, but truthfully, unless you're really really incompetent, it's not that hard to build a comp.
I'd recommend building one for yourself if only for freedom of choice of parts and because usually, you can use better parts while still keeping the comp at the same price level as the OEM comps.
For components, I recommend reading the multitude of reviews and articles over at sites like www.hardforum.com, www.anandtech.com, www.designtechnica.com, www.arstechnica.com, etc. It depends on your preferences, like Intel or AMD, ATi or Nvidia, etc., and some people are really diehard in favoring one over the other, so it's best to read reviews and see what would suit you best. For a gaming PC, I'd say an Athlon 64 would give you top performance. (And I'm not an AMD follower, I use mostly Intel systems and some Alphas at school, and I like ATi more than Nvidia, except in the driver department).
The dangers of picking components is that some might not mix well (like some Athlon 64 motherboards don't get along with some types of memory).
If you're still iffy about building a computer, I'd say there's no real reason to worry if you know what you're doing when working with computers.
I can imagine the crack parties going on at universities when their board of trustees decide that they want some hip and edgy building.
Trustee 1: "Hey, how can we waste a lot of money really fast?"
Trustee 2: "We can hire a famous postmodern architect. Their buildings always go overbudget and run into schedule delays"
Trustee 3: "A toast to postmodernism!"
All: "Huzzah!"
I've seen other pomo style buildings. MIT also has that weird dorm building that looks like a cross between a sponge and a retarded sponge. Harvard has some other dorm that looks a little more normal, but still not that appealing to me.
Postmodernism: a synonym for "We like to throw legos around and see what we can make"
I had stopped ZA from starting up by default for the past few days, but I enabled it which allowed me to grab that one patch.
The worm can be removed with McAfee's stinger tool (the Mcafee link has a link to it).
Systems all clear.
I had updated Windows XP except for whatever patch it was for this security hole because I had heard it caused problems. Then of course, Sasser hits and targets the security hole that I didn't patch for.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
I'm rebooting into Linux. Screw you Windows.
Oh, this wasn't a presentation by RFID industry guys. This was buy a group at my college that did some research on RFID.
But I think they meant total burning out, like completely destroying the RFID. But I do think that there isn't any consumer-level devices out now that can fully destroy the RFID tags.
When I listened to a presentation about RFID, the presenters said to totally destroy an RFID tag takes a machine much larger than one you could take into a Walmart without looking suspicious.
And I don't think wearing a moo moo would allow you to hide one of the devices either.
I've always pondered what the grand purpose Scroll Lock had. Now I know, and realized I threw 8 years of my life away.
And waiting another 4 months for Half Life 2? Come on Valve, I'd still buy it if you released it tomorrow.
I think everyone who gets subpoenaed should say "Kazaa? You mean that Shaq movie? Man, that one stunk worse than Steel."
The RIAA will think anyone who saw the Shaq movies is too crazy to sue.
Seriously. In the forum I frequent, a few members had seen Infinium Labs. The reason why we haven't seen anything besides renderings is that the business is actually a small rented office in a Florida mall, with a desk, computer, and a telephone.
Actually, many colleges are starting to block P2P applications from connecting to their networks or uploading and downloading files. The RIAA knows colleges are hotspots of file sharing (look at how MIT and RIT shut down their on campus Direct Connect servers), so they'd target schools first. The schools therefore are trying to protect themselves and the students by blocking these services. My school has blocked all known P2P programs so far, kazaa, morpheus, bittorrent etc.
I think Fox is gonna license the camera footage as a new reality tv series "World's most exciting random camera footage."
Woo, alcohol is the next step in computing...FLAMMABLE COMPUTERS.
Isn't it ironic that this article about 'copyright protection a crime against humanity' is showing up in Wired, which is owned by Microsoft? Hello Palladium.
I only came to college to host a server...
This is reminiscent of other some other sites that became closed content. Time Warner shutting out the public from their news won't spur increased AOL membership, it'll just make people look for alternative free sites.
For example, IGN and Gamespot, two of the largest video and electronic entertainment sites on the web, turned to exclusive content, forcing people to pay a membership fee just to see stories when they broke. Rather than getting tons of new subscribers, many (including me) went and sought alternatives than to pay just to read stuff that was elsewhere.
Come on Time Warner, information is free, share it with us.
If you think about it, in the past 25 years or so, software development has become increasingly more complex. Even though there are many more programming and scripting languages available today, more efficient than the likes of QBasic, regular C, Fortran, Cobol, etc., it really seems like software development tends further away from improvement and more towards diffculty.
Sure, one of the better innovations was the introduction of objects, but rather than drastically improving programming, it seems like it's more useful creating worthless shovelware, as people just repeatedly use objects coded by someone else, maybe add their own source code, and turn out some "software" that is barely usuable.
If SiS is going to spend millions on the 0.13 micron fab processes, they should really also attempt to make something that can compete with Ati and Nvidia's new cards. As it stands, being able to pump out .13 micron chips seems only like it's for bragging rights, because this chip barely compares with a Radeon 9000, which (I think) is only .15 micron. But hey, maybe SiS really likes spending the money.
With this new RPG making entity, I hope both companies get out of their dry spell and bring us Chrono Trigger 3. Chrono Cross was good and all, but I really want the Akira Toriyama character designs, and since he usually designs for Enix, we might get what we want for once. But it begs the question: Will they be called Square Enix Electronic Arts in the US and bring us football and hockey RPGS?