why would anyone want to stay in prison for the rest of their life?
Because I could have lots of time alone with my books... *crunch*... That's not fair. That's not fair at all. There was time now. There was, was all the time I needed...
Gravitron is the only ride that ever made me throw up. Eating the giant fricken elephant ear (funnel cake) two minutes before getting on it probably had something to do with it, though...
Firstly, you suck.:) Secondly, it is a pretty sweet solution. For a stock cooler, according to the tests performed, it's nearly perfect for temperature and noise control. The article makes an interesting prediction about these coolers and ebay...we'll see. I'd like one of these when I build my replacement system at the end of the year, but not neccessarily with the CPU they got it with.
I don't have a reference at the moment, if I dig one up I'll post. The destroyed outposts were supposed to be because of the Ferengi. They were supposed to be the "new Klingons," but they were so goofy that nobody could take them seriously. Fortunately, the writers corrected that and invented the Borg. If only I could remember where I read that...
See, you just don't get it. You're being reasonable. You're supposed to start frothing at the mouth, babbling unintelligable crap. At least, that's what the anti-Christians expect from you. And they won't listen to a thing you're saying, even if it makes perfect sense. They already have made up their minds, and you refuting one of their examples won't make a lick of difference because they'll keep coming up with more. You could refute or explain every single one, and they'll not listen. Their final dismissal will be "but you believe it, so I'm not going to listen to you" no matter how completely you explain yourself.
I'm not saying religion isn't a factor, but it can't be blamed for human violence any more than any other factor. You cite one example of a completely religious-centered massacre, and it isn't even on the list of the biggest massacres you cited earlier. I expect there are more. I seriously doubt, however, that the number of solely-religious atrocities can come anywhere near a significant proportion of the atrocities commited by humans in our history. The Romans, who barely half-believed their own religions, commited a good number of atrocities in their wars against the "savages." Just one example, but I wonder if anyone has compiled all of human history, its wars and subjugations, and categorized the factors involved.
As I look at the list of the biggest slaughters you provided, I don't see a single one that is completely attributable to any religion, or even that religion is responsible for "a lot" of what is listed. What I do see is a list of political power struggles played out over the face of the entire planet. Territory acquisition, squashing opposition, and economic gain seem to be the biggies.
Your argument that atheism can't be blamed for the mass slaughters of the 20th century by atheistic states is exactly the same as the argument that religion can't be blamed for the atrocities throughout history. You're saying that since there were other factors involved, atheism can't be blamed. Whenever somebody tries to say the same thing about religion, i.e. "the crusades were a land-grab by the wealthy politicians running the church, they just used Christianity to rally up the people," the immediate response is "so what, they were Christians, and therefore Christians are evil." So, I'm going to say the same thing. "They were atheists, therefore atheists are evil." Now you can proceed to argue that they're an isolated group and can't be held up as an example of what an atheist should be, and I can keep saying "lalalala, I can't hear you, atheists are evil."
I've gone through this little song and dance before. Every time I bring up the hypocrisy of the crusades, and that they were very much not a Christian thing to do, I get modded down and berated because Christians committed the acts, and therefore Christians are evil, and everything they have to say should be ignored and boy, don't we feel better about ourselves for stamping on those evil Christians. It's really quite frustrating. I don't mean to go off on you quite so much, but I get tired of the double-standard when it comes to this argument.
Bottom line; people in positions of power use whatever means they have at their disposal to gain and maintain power and influence. Religion (and nationalism, and racism, and all those things you list) is a powerful motivator, therefore evil people have used it for their own gain. Does this mean religion is inherently evil? Only if the last century means atheism is inherently evil.
It's more to do with the relationship with how I currently game. I buy a game for $30-$50, play when I want, for how long I want, or as infrequently I want. I can take over a year to finish the game if I want, and it still only cost me my initial $30-$50.
In an online game, I can do the same, except I'm paying $15 a month, or whatever, and all the time I'm not playing other people are advancing past me. After I've spent the equivalent for a conventional game, my relative position depends on how much time I've put into it. I don't play enough to warrant the extra expense in money and time over the course of a year to justify.
Yeah, the same could be said for 'net access, but rent/mortgage is kinda pushing it. You gotta have a place to live, and the cost is more about the area you live in than anything else. My Internet connection costs me about $30/month, and it's worth every penny to me. $15/month for one game isn't worth it. Heck, $10/month for a single game isn't worth it. If online games ever get down to the $2-$5/month mark, I might start thinking about it. At that price, it equates a conventional game bought at full price to 10-25 months worth of playing.
I was gonna say kinda the same thing, only instead of "ever" I was going to say "never." It sounds great, and all, and it appeals to me as my preferred class in tabletop rpgs is a thief, or fighter/thief. However, it still doesn't make me want to start plunking down a monthly fee for the experience. If I was putting monthly money into a game, I'd play it non-stop just to get my money's worth out of it, and that's just not something I want to do.
Ah, but if you get the laptops from where the high-end marker-uppers get them, you can save some money. M-Tech is the direct vendor for Clevo, the company that actually manufactures all of these laptops. The one in this article looks like the D900K. The reviewed laptop costs $4247. The same config from M-tech is $3825. Granted, that's without any kind of software bundle, case, or extras.
There are a couple things you may not have considered with your hunch. First, if you are doing 3D textured graphics, then transfer speed to texture and vertex memory is key to performance, and PCI is many times slower than AGP. 10x is not "barely an improvement" in the real-time 3d graphics world.
True, but on a typical home system, where the PCI bus is mostly available, is it enough bandwidth to keep the video card supplied with data fast enough? Are games these days really pushing so much data that the PCI bus isn't sufficient? Sure, it's nice to have 10x the bandwidth, but is that being used?
Secondly, there typically isn't just one bus in a system, and that PCI bus is typically on the other side of more than one bridge relative to the CPU, where AGP is typically only one bridge away.
You have a slight error there. The PCI bus, and the slots, should always be separated from the CPU by only the northbridge. I don't think I've ever encountered a chipset where the PCI slots were off the southbridge. They're kinda "between" the bridges. Arstechnica has a nice diagram of this in their motherboard fundamentals article series here on page 3. The diagram they show is the 440HX, which is many moons old.
Finally I just don't understand the obsessiveness of your argument. Who cares about PCI? Do you think it costs that much more to manufacture an AGP card? The $$$ are in the GPU and memory, not in the bus interface. A PCI card wouldn't save you $$$ other than being not in demand and therefore cheaper because no one wants them. Are there really mainstream motherboards with no AGP slots? Haven't seen one in years.
It's not about cost to manufacture anymore. These days AGP is cheaper for everyone, unless they have one of those crap pre-built machines with no AGP slot. It's about why the interface was created in the first place. It was designed to expand the memory available to the graphics processor by giving it a fast connection to system RAM. The first few iterations of AGP did this very poorly. By the time AGP was doing it right, its purpose was null and void because manufacturers were sticking gobs of cheap RAM directly on the cards. Whether the faster bus has done any good in the long term isn't something any review site has decided to look at. Nobody has the numbers to compare the final version of AGP with PCI in the real world, not just with specifications. It seems like change for change's sake, in hind-sight. Heck, even during the transition, it was apparent AGP wasn't really doing anything for anybody, but nobody who matters stood up to say so.
The problem I have with AGP is that if I want to stick an additional video card in my machine, I have to hunt and peck for a decent PCI card, and it costs me a bit more than it should in time, money, and effort to find. Dual and quad-head AGP cards are available, sure, but they cost significantly more than just adding a PCI card, and then I'm left with an AGP card I can't do anything with unless I happen to have another machine that needs an upgrade.
PCI-Express is a bastard hack of a combo PCI/AGP philosophy. Now, not only do we no longer have a set number of standard slots, we have different numbers of different sized slots to deal with. Gone are the days of a 5 or 6-slot motherboard where any expansion card could be installed in any slot, and heck you could put 5 of the same thing in if you had the need. Now you need to not only make sure you have the right kind of PCI-Express slot available, you need to make sure that the card you got is going to fit right in a particular space. No more "Well, not enough room in my case to use slot 3, I'll just stick it in slot 5." Maybe it won't be so bad, but PCI-Express is too new to see where it'll end up, and I feel like being pessimistic right now. It just feels like more change for change's sake. And yet again, if I need to get another video card, I need t
You make an excellent point. It's been so long since review sites stopped looking at PCI cards that there's no way to say if AGP itself has shown any benefits beyond a couple of frames per second here or there. Unless somebody were to get their hands on AGP, PCI, and PCI-E versions of the latest generation and reveal the truth to us all. We're talking a couple-thousand bucks worth of video cards, so I'm certainly not in a position to do it. I'd gladly do the testing, though. I have a hunch that AGP would show barely an improvement over PCI in a typical system (where the PCI bus is mostly idle), and PCI-E would only show improvement in a dual-card config.
Good call, I was going to mention M-Tech until I saw your post. I felt burned after I bought my Alienware a couple years ago. Now I'm older, wiser, and cheaper. My next laptop will be from M-Tech, since it doesn't appear that Clevo sells directly to consumers.
Yes, replying to myself... Just in case somebody takes the opportunity to get uppity, I'm not talking about the early radio and TV shows that were owned and produced by some company to advertise their product. I'm talking about the more subtle kind, where the product makes an appearance in the show, but nobody comes right out and says "hey, buy X, because X is good." Some recent examples get pretty close to that, but they don't quite step over that line.
How long has blatant product placement been going on? The earliest I can remember is the box of Cherios in Superman. Anybody know of earlier examples, or if maybe there's a list online?
Slashdot Mirror
Snack attack, mutha f*****!!!
Because I could have lots of time alone with my books... *crunch*... That's not fair. That's not fair at all. There was time now. There was, was all the time I needed...
[timallen]Arrrooooo??? Arrr arr arrrr![/timallen]
Gravitron is the only ride that ever made me throw up. Eating the giant fricken elephant ear (funnel cake) two minutes before getting on it probably had something to do with it, though...
No no, I got the pun, that's why I said "you suck." You made me groan audibly. That's a good thing in a pun and I enjoyed it, but still...
Firstly, you suck. :) Secondly, it is a pretty sweet solution. For a stock cooler, according to the tests performed, it's nearly perfect for temperature and noise control. The article makes an interesting prediction about these coolers and ebay...we'll see. I'd like one of these when I build my replacement system at the end of the year, but not neccessarily with the CPU they got it with.
I don't have a reference at the moment, if I dig one up I'll post. The destroyed outposts were supposed to be because of the Ferengi. They were supposed to be the "new Klingons," but they were so goofy that nobody could take them seriously. Fortunately, the writers corrected that and invented the Borg. If only I could remember where I read that...
Only Pogo the Monkey is allowed to use banana cannons!
This just scares the crap out of me...
See, you just don't get it. You're being reasonable. You're supposed to start frothing at the mouth, babbling unintelligable crap. At least, that's what the anti-Christians expect from you. And they won't listen to a thing you're saying, even if it makes perfect sense. They already have made up their minds, and you refuting one of their examples won't make a lick of difference because they'll keep coming up with more. You could refute or explain every single one, and they'll not listen. Their final dismissal will be "but you believe it, so I'm not going to listen to you" no matter how completely you explain yourself.
You laugh, but there's a very real correlation of when aliens have visited, and when tentacle hentai came about.
My UID isn't all that low, but what the heck...
I had to walk 20 miles in the snow, up-hill both ways, and naked just to read Slashdot! And get a hair-cut, you hippies!
I'm not saying religion isn't a factor, but it can't be blamed for human violence any more than any other factor. You cite one example of a completely religious-centered massacre, and it isn't even on the list of the biggest massacres you cited earlier. I expect there are more. I seriously doubt, however, that the number of solely-religious atrocities can come anywhere near a significant proportion of the atrocities commited by humans in our history. The Romans, who barely half-believed their own religions, commited a good number of atrocities in their wars against the "savages." Just one example, but I wonder if anyone has compiled all of human history, its wars and subjugations, and categorized the factors involved.
As I look at the list of the biggest slaughters you provided, I don't see a single one that is completely attributable to any religion, or even that religion is responsible for "a lot" of what is listed. What I do see is a list of political power struggles played out over the face of the entire planet. Territory acquisition, squashing opposition, and economic gain seem to be the biggies.
Your argument that atheism can't be blamed for the mass slaughters of the 20th century by atheistic states is exactly the same as the argument that religion can't be blamed for the atrocities throughout history. You're saying that since there were other factors involved, atheism can't be blamed. Whenever somebody tries to say the same thing about religion, i.e. "the crusades were a land-grab by the wealthy politicians running the church, they just used Christianity to rally up the people," the immediate response is "so what, they were Christians, and therefore Christians are evil." So, I'm going to say the same thing. "They were atheists, therefore atheists are evil." Now you can proceed to argue that they're an isolated group and can't be held up as an example of what an atheist should be, and I can keep saying "lalalala, I can't hear you, atheists are evil."
I've gone through this little song and dance before. Every time I bring up the hypocrisy of the crusades, and that they were very much not a Christian thing to do, I get modded down and berated because Christians committed the acts, and therefore Christians are evil, and everything they have to say should be ignored and boy, don't we feel better about ourselves for stamping on those evil Christians. It's really quite frustrating. I don't mean to go off on you quite so much, but I get tired of the double-standard when it comes to this argument.
Bottom line; people in positions of power use whatever means they have at their disposal to gain and maintain power and influence. Religion (and nationalism, and racism, and all those things you list) is a powerful motivator, therefore evil people have used it for their own gain. Does this mean religion is inherently evil? Only if the last century means atheism is inherently evil.
It's more to do with the relationship with how I currently game. I buy a game for $30-$50, play when I want, for how long I want, or as infrequently I want. I can take over a year to finish the game if I want, and it still only cost me my initial $30-$50.
In an online game, I can do the same, except I'm paying $15 a month, or whatever, and all the time I'm not playing other people are advancing past me. After I've spent the equivalent for a conventional game, my relative position depends on how much time I've put into it. I don't play enough to warrant the extra expense in money and time over the course of a year to justify.
Yeah, the same could be said for 'net access, but rent/mortgage is kinda pushing it. You gotta have a place to live, and the cost is more about the area you live in than anything else. My Internet connection costs me about $30/month, and it's worth every penny to me. $15/month for one game isn't worth it. Heck, $10/month for a single game isn't worth it. If online games ever get down to the $2-$5/month mark, I might start thinking about it. At that price, it equates a conventional game bought at full price to 10-25 months worth of playing.
I was gonna say kinda the same thing, only instead of "ever" I was going to say "never." It sounds great, and all, and it appeals to me as my preferred class in tabletop rpgs is a thief, or fighter/thief. However, it still doesn't make me want to start plunking down a monthly fee for the experience. If I was putting monthly money into a game, I'd play it non-stop just to get my money's worth out of it, and that's just not something I want to do.
Ah, but if you get the laptops from where the high-end marker-uppers get them, you can save some money. M-Tech is the direct vendor for Clevo, the company that actually manufactures all of these laptops. The one in this article looks like the D900K. The reviewed laptop costs $4247. The same config from M-tech is $3825. Granted, that's without any kind of software bundle, case, or extras.
There are a couple things you may not have considered with your hunch. First, if you are doing 3D textured graphics, then transfer speed to texture and vertex memory is key to performance, and PCI is many times slower than AGP. 10x is not "barely an improvement" in the real-time 3d graphics world.
True, but on a typical home system, where the PCI bus is mostly available, is it enough bandwidth to keep the video card supplied with data fast enough? Are games these days really pushing so much data that the PCI bus isn't sufficient? Sure, it's nice to have 10x the bandwidth, but is that being used?
Secondly, there typically isn't just one bus in a system, and that PCI bus is typically on the other side of more than one bridge relative to the CPU, where AGP is typically only one bridge away.
You have a slight error there. The PCI bus, and the slots, should always be separated from the CPU by only the northbridge. I don't think I've ever encountered a chipset where the PCI slots were off the southbridge. They're kinda "between" the bridges. Arstechnica has a nice diagram of this in their motherboard fundamentals article series here on page 3. The diagram they show is the 440HX, which is many moons old.
Finally I just don't understand the obsessiveness of your argument. Who cares about PCI? Do you think it costs that much more to manufacture an AGP card? The $$$ are in the GPU and memory, not in the bus interface. A PCI card wouldn't save you $$$ other than being not in demand and therefore cheaper because no one wants them. Are there really mainstream motherboards with no AGP slots? Haven't seen one in years.
It's not about cost to manufacture anymore. These days AGP is cheaper for everyone, unless they have one of those crap pre-built machines with no AGP slot. It's about why the interface was created in the first place. It was designed to expand the memory available to the graphics processor by giving it a fast connection to system RAM. The first few iterations of AGP did this very poorly. By the time AGP was doing it right, its purpose was null and void because manufacturers were sticking gobs of cheap RAM directly on the cards. Whether the faster bus has done any good in the long term isn't something any review site has decided to look at. Nobody has the numbers to compare the final version of AGP with PCI in the real world, not just with specifications. It seems like change for change's sake, in hind-sight. Heck, even during the transition, it was apparent AGP wasn't really doing anything for anybody, but nobody who matters stood up to say so.
The problem I have with AGP is that if I want to stick an additional video card in my machine, I have to hunt and peck for a decent PCI card, and it costs me a bit more than it should in time, money, and effort to find. Dual and quad-head AGP cards are available, sure, but they cost significantly more than just adding a PCI card, and then I'm left with an AGP card I can't do anything with unless I happen to have another machine that needs an upgrade.
PCI-Express is a bastard hack of a combo PCI/AGP philosophy. Now, not only do we no longer have a set number of standard slots, we have different numbers of different sized slots to deal with. Gone are the days of a 5 or 6-slot motherboard where any expansion card could be installed in any slot, and heck you could put 5 of the same thing in if you had the need. Now you need to not only make sure you have the right kind of PCI-Express slot available, you need to make sure that the card you got is going to fit right in a particular space. No more "Well, not enough room in my case to use slot 3, I'll just stick it in slot 5." Maybe it won't be so bad, but PCI-Express is too new to see where it'll end up, and I feel like being pessimistic right now. It just feels like more change for change's sake. And yet again, if I need to get another video card, I need t
You make an excellent point. It's been so long since review sites stopped looking at PCI cards that there's no way to say if AGP itself has shown any benefits beyond a couple of frames per second here or there. Unless somebody were to get their hands on AGP, PCI, and PCI-E versions of the latest generation and reveal the truth to us all. We're talking a couple-thousand bucks worth of video cards, so I'm certainly not in a position to do it. I'd gladly do the testing, though. I have a hunch that AGP would show barely an improvement over PCI in a typical system (where the PCI bus is mostly idle), and PCI-E would only show improvement in a dual-card config.
It is funny, but it's also flamebait. It just depends on your perspective.
Your post is worthless without pics for the rest of us.
That's ok, it's a dupe. You're not missing much. If you want to see the old one again, look here.
Good call, I was going to mention M-Tech until I saw your post. I felt burned after I bought my Alienware a couple years ago. Now I'm older, wiser, and cheaper. My next laptop will be from M-Tech, since it doesn't appear that Clevo sells directly to consumers.
Yes, replying to myself... Just in case somebody takes the opportunity to get uppity, I'm not talking about the early radio and TV shows that were owned and produced by some company to advertise their product. I'm talking about the more subtle kind, where the product makes an appearance in the show, but nobody comes right out and says "hey, buy X, because X is good." Some recent examples get pretty close to that, but they don't quite step over that line.
How long has blatant product placement been going on? The earliest I can remember is the box of Cherios in Superman. Anybody know of earlier examples, or if maybe there's a list online?