to CONVENIENTLY send and receive pgp-encrypted gmail that prevents plaintext from ever reaching Google's servers.
I thought Gmail was free because Google's robots scanned the contents of your emails to determine what advertisements to display next to your inbox. If Google can't read your email, they could only show users random advertisements, or maybe ask them to complete some questionnaire to tick off their interests.
Either way, I think Google makes less money if they can't read people's Gmail messages, so I doubt we'll see it.
I visited Germany recently and enjoyed the graffiti tremendously. While there's some utter crap, I found the graffiti to be of significantly higher quality than what I typically encounter in my home country.
USian here, where graffiti is promptly removed, thankfully, because it's usually awful. But I think I know what you mean about Berlin, though I haven't been there personally. I have, however, been to Athens, Greece (around 2007). I swear, that city is just about the ideal environment for graffiti artists:
a. Nearly every building is made from concrete; my tour guide told me that there is a large concrete industry in Athens and that it is basically always the most economical building material.
b. Generally, plain concrete is irrepressibly bland, drab and awful to look at.
c. It's a "Mediterranean country", apparently; I asked a few of the locals, young and old, about the graffiti and their attitudes ranged from indifference to mild appreciation. Even the cops didn't seem to care - I asked one for directions once, and he encouraged me to check out some good graffiti a couple streets away from my destination. I was surprised at how relaxed the locals were about the whole thing.
Practically every wall of every building was screaming "I AM A BLANK CANVAS". Simple tags and anarchy signs were everywhere. Many city blocks had at least one elaborate spray-painted mural. Oddly, nobody seemed to spray-paint over one another's work; I guess there was just so much free space...
But at any rate, I took way more photos of the graffiti I encountered than of the Parthenon or any other famous landmarks. I'm glad I visited the place before all the riots started.
Chasing the upgrade dragon is a luxury, not a curse. Console games often do not render at 1080p and they often have a target framerate around 30 fps, which I find atrocious. Most PC gamers, myself included, prefer 60+ fps.
I've saved a lot of money by buying mid-range PC hardware and playing games that are one or two years old. Of course, this would not work so well with multiplayer games...
I think if you buy a mid-range PC a year or two after this next generation of consoles is released, you'll be set for a good 4-5 years at least.
Usually, I would establish "less safe" with video and audio recordings of the driver's inability to maintain lane and other moving violations, as well as my encounter with the driver, and the sobriety tests administered during the stop of the particular individual.
Bravo, dear sir or madam. This is exactly how it should be done.
And a controller is fine for FPS games. I can play Halo as easily as I can play BF3 on the PC with a mouse and keyboard.
Well of course; when you use a controller, auto-aim is enabled. Console shooters have been doing this for a while. Some new pc games support this, too.
Machine guns are already illegal almost everywhere.
I'm pretty sure you have to pass a strict background check and pay a $200 fee, but I know it's possible. Same with silencers/suppressors. Otherwise, this man would be in jail by now.
After noting the higher "efficiencies" of privatizing education, Adam Smith still concludes that a more broadly educated public through public education (even at the expense of wasting a bit more money on less-motivated students) is ultimately for the public good.
The current school system in the US is a bloated government monopoly, indifferent to competing models of schooling. You pay for it through taxes whether you send your kids to public school, private school, or if you homeschool them (or even if you don't have kids at all). There are alternatives to public school in the US, but the government doesn't care. They get their money, even if you shell out for private school or quit your job to homeschool.
At the minimum, parents should receive vouchers equivalent in value to what the local public school system pays per pupil, vouchers that could be redeemed at private schools, or used for homeschooling expenses. This would put real pressure on crappy public schools to reform themselves or face starvation, unlike the misguided "No Child Left Behind Act".
Hell how many even OC or use liquid cooling? if it was more than 5% I'd be surprised.
Not too many people overclock, true. But I sure do; I found that a +20% overclock/overvolt on my aging Kentsfield CPU was well worth the +45% jump in peak power consumption, and it turns out Kentsfields really don't mind running at 80 degrees C under load. Framerates in Crysis 2 and L.A. Noire are playable now, and I didn't have to shell out for new cpu/mobo/ram. Oh and fwiw, it really pisses me off that you can't overclock low-end Intel CPUs anymore. I have fond memories of boosting my C2D e4300 from 1.8Ghz to 2.7Ghz. Props to AMD for unlocking the multipliers on basically all their CPUs these days.
However, a lot of people use cpu and especially gpu coolers with heatpipes, which is a liquid cooling of sorts. The "twin frozr" system MSI uses on my Radeon 7850 has heatpipes galore and keeps my card cool and quiet despite my overclocking.
Heatpipes were really a great idea, bringing many of the benefits of liquid cooling along in a compact, hassle-free package. No risk of leaks or water pumps failing, no need to construct a big radiator rack that requires a full-size or larger case...
Oh also, as awful as Netburst CPUs were (long execution pipeline? blech no thank you - I game...), I'd like to see someone overclock one to 10 Ghz for the lulz.
If you sit in front of me, you're likely to find my feet right behind yours. This is part of the reason I no longer fly. The rest being accounted for by the TSA nonsense.
Same here, pretty much. The security took way too long at McCarran Int'l last time I was there. Then the plane ride was uncomfortable, even for a little guy like me.
What we need is a new approach to passenger seating that takes into account security, comfort, and economy. How about this: Replace all the airline seats with padded tubes stacked like firewood (think Bruce Willis's trip to Phloston Paradise in The Fifth Element). Mix nitrous oxide in with the passenger tube's air to sedate them (I imagine it would be hard for a terrorist to hijack a plane while sedated). Safety procedure for an emergency landing is: you do nothing, because you're already limp (and therefore less likely to break bones) and you're wrapped in a giant padded burrito. Awesome. Maybe wake people up if you're ditching the plane in water, but otherwise, nah. Just eject their tubes a safe distance away from the aircraft upon landing.
Imagine boarding a plane in Los Angeles, lying down on a comfy pad, and then the next thing you know... you're waking up in New York, or Paris, or Moscow, hearing the local time and weather from the soothing, confident voice of a captain who you just *know* held an eight-hour orgy with the rest of the flight crew while everyone else was sedated.
Some people would throw up from the gas as they disembarked, sure, but that's a small price to pay. Plenty of people get airsick during turbulence and the airlines just give them a sack.
I am still wanting to see a viable long term storage solution for the waste...
We have one in the US. It's called "Yucca Mountain". It's all ready to go, but Sen. Harry Reid put the kibosh on it, because he's an idiot who unfortunately holds a lot of sway in the senate.
What about seek times in a low-RPM, high-capacity drive?
I have two 3.5" drives in my desktop. One is a Western Digital 250GB 7200 RPM ATA/133 drive from 2005, the other is a Western Digital 5400 1TB 5400 RPM "green" SATA 3.0gbps drive from around 2011.
The 5400 RPM drive is nice and fast for big files, but lord help you if you install a game on it. Load times are easily twice as long for a big AAA game like Crysis.
I checked and both drives have three platters. Is this what's killing my 5400 RPM drive?
Apple is one of the most popular brands ever and that's because it re-invented itself. Dell has a shot at re-branding itself with the right leadership.
I think you're right on the money there. Apple re-invented itself; Dell will re-brand itself.
When Apple was in a slump it transformed from a computer company locked in a race to the bottom - fighting beige-box Mac clones with beige boxes of their own - into a design company that produces its own ecosystem of high-margin computers and online services (iTunes store, iOS / OS X app stores). Apple acknowledges this; "Apple Computer" is now just "Apple", officially.
I don't own a Macbook, and I don't want one, but I can totally understand why they're selling like hotcakes: elegant and sturdy design, luxury status, vertical integration of hardware / software / internet services, and now retina displays... the list goes on. Love them or hate them, but Apple's computers stand out.
Dell, on the other hand? They're still making cheap generic beige boxes, except these days they're "piano black". I'm sure that's exactly what their corporate/government customers want, but the question then is, "How do you re-invent yourself when your customers just want blade servers, cheap desktops, and on-site service plans?" Dell already does those things well.
I'm guessing that Dell's idea of "re-inventing itself" will be to buy Alienware again, or to imitate Apple. Hopefully, they'll try something none of us thought of and prove me wrong in the process.
I live in a school zone that had a bad speeding problem.
Odds are you live in an area with a bad school zone problem. Or at least, you do if your city is anything like mine. In my area, school zones have a 25 mph speed limit... ALL HOURS ALL DAYS. Kids are only crossing those streets for 2 hours a day max, and they have crossing guards to boot.
Wow... why would one need to rent a server? Doesn't anyone remember the golden age of gaming when online games came with server software pre-installed? For instance, most of the Quake servers were on gamers' machines. Pay for running a server? Maybe I'm just old but that sounds insane to me.
Monthly server costs can be pretty cheap, and for some games, you really do need a business-class server for smooth netplay. For example, I used to play a lot of Battlefield 2 - that's a game supporting up to 64 players (and that game only really came into its own with that many people playing). A lot of BF2 clans would have monthly membership dues to pay for server costs - I almost joined a couple of them, and they only wanted $8 per month from me. Considering that I played that game a good 100 hours a month back in 2006, it seemed like a pretty reasonable deal. However, I stopped playing that game when I realized my borderline obsession with it was screwing up my grades in school.
I saw the same thing back when AlterIW was offering a dedicated server alternative to the TERRIBLE matchmaking system in Modern Warfare 2.
I pay about $0.09 / kWhr on average (depends how much I use per month). I once did the math on this and found that the power savings from upgrading my old hardware (overclocked core 2 quad pushing about 140W, 150W graphics card, multiple hard drives, several fans) to a modern sandy/ivy bridge system with an 80+ psu would take a few years (maybe 4?) to pay for itself in savings. That's a fairly long time in the computing world. When people ask me about buying a new computer to save on electricity, I generally advise them not to unless they're concerned about CO2 emissions from the local coal plant or if they're still on an Intel HeatBurst platform.
I live in Iowa, so your mileage may vary - I seem to recall reading that Germany averaged the equivalent of $0.20 / kWhr (!) a year or two ago.
As for your comment on cpu/psu fans getting less efficient, I feel I should share my secret: mesh filters on all air intakes on the case, plus semi-annual cleaning of dust on fan blades and heatsink fins with computer duster. This works wonders; I have fans nearing their 6th birthday in my PC and they're just fine, and I never see any big dust bunnies in there. Before I figured this out, my previous computer's fans were moaning and groaning all the time.
I don't think they have them on the consumer level graphics cards. It turned out that the consumer graphics cards were better for our needs since they had more and faster texture sampling units.
I recently bought a Radeon HD 7850 2GB card that I'm pretty sure has ECC. Cost was $200. It's pretty cool - if you overclock the memory too high, the card doesn't start crashing your games or anything, it just doesn't run any faster.
To my knowledge, all graphics cards with GDDR5 memory have ECC.
This BFG edition is a JOKE compared to the mods (100% made by volunteer work) I've been playing lately. I've seen volunteer effort replace almost ALL the textures with HD textures (very nicely done, looks like professional quality), add in bloom/HDR, add in parallax occlusion mapping (high-end computers only!), add in new monsters, and probably more I'm forgetting. Just get a $10 or $5 copy of the Doom 3 from 2004 and get some of these FREE mods, and the game will look so good you'll think it was made in 2010 or 2011 and it's TOTALLY worth playing it again with them installed. And if you're a pussyshit who plays with the room lights turned on and you don't understand the word "atmosphere", then YES, you can get a mod to tape a flashlight to your gun. A short list of the best mods (Note: these mods can be a son of a bitch to install, especially if you want more than one. I'd advise you just get the mod from the bottom-most URL if you want a painless experience):
Is your life that devoid of meaning that it needs the soothing animation effect to make it tolerable? It is like people who complain about a tearing effect when they move a window around... who the fuck cares? I select a window, drag it to where I want it and I want it done as fast possible and not as nice as possible.
Well, the tearing effect in particular bothers me because oftentimes I like to read the contents of a window while I am moving it. I think a window manager with functionality as the #1 priority should try as hard as possible to never obscure the contents of a window.
I know what you mean about desktop eye candy slowing things down... it's one of the reasons I made the switch from Mac OS X to Windows 7 a few years ago; Windows is more responsive, even with the unnecessary "aero" bullhooey enabled. Linux isn't really an option for me because I run an ATI (er, sorry, AMD) graphics card, and I hear that combination is a rarefied circle of hell.
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With all those datacenters the town won't be that cold for long.
From TFS: "The constant, biting wind may have stunted the growth of Lulea's tourism industry..."
If they just build the datacenter a little ways outside town, I imagine the people there wouldn't notice a significant change in temperature.
My next console will be my current one - a Wintendo.
to CONVENIENTLY send and receive pgp-encrypted gmail that prevents plaintext from ever reaching Google's servers.
I thought Gmail was free because Google's robots scanned the contents of your emails to determine what advertisements to display next to your inbox. If Google can't read your email, they could only show users random advertisements, or maybe ask them to complete some questionnaire to tick off their interests.
Either way, I think Google makes less money if they can't read people's Gmail messages, so I doubt we'll see it.
I visited Germany recently and enjoyed the graffiti tremendously. While there's some utter crap, I found the graffiti to be of significantly higher quality than what I typically encounter in my home country.
USian here, where graffiti is promptly removed, thankfully, because it's usually awful. But I think I know what you mean about Berlin, though I haven't been there personally. I have, however, been to Athens, Greece (around 2007). I swear, that city is just about the ideal environment for graffiti artists:
a. Nearly every building is made from concrete; my tour guide told me that there is a large concrete industry in Athens and that it is basically always the most economical building material.
b. Generally, plain concrete is irrepressibly bland, drab and awful to look at.
c. It's a "Mediterranean country", apparently; I asked a few of the locals, young and old, about the graffiti and their attitudes ranged from indifference to mild appreciation. Even the cops didn't seem to care - I asked one for directions once, and he encouraged me to check out some good graffiti a couple streets away from my destination. I was surprised at how relaxed the locals were about the whole thing.
Practically every wall of every building was screaming "I AM A BLANK CANVAS". Simple tags and anarchy signs were everywhere. Many city blocks had at least one elaborate spray-painted mural. Oddly, nobody seemed to spray-paint over one another's work; I guess there was just so much free space...
But at any rate, I took way more photos of the graffiti I encountered than of the Parthenon or any other famous landmarks. I'm glad I visited the place before all the riots started.
Chasing the upgrade dragon is a luxury, not a curse. Console games often do not render at 1080p and they often have a target framerate around 30 fps, which I find atrocious. Most PC gamers, myself included, prefer 60+ fps.
I've saved a lot of money by buying mid-range PC hardware and playing games that are one or two years old. Of course, this would not work so well with multiplayer games...
I think if you buy a mid-range PC a year or two after this next generation of consoles is released, you'll be set for a good 4-5 years at least.
Usually, I would establish "less safe" with video and audio recordings of the driver's inability to maintain lane and other moving violations, as well as my encounter with the driver, and the sobriety tests administered during the stop of the particular individual.
Bravo, dear sir or madam. This is exactly how it should be done.
And a controller is fine for FPS games. I can play Halo as easily as I can play BF3 on the PC with a mouse and keyboard.
Well of course; when you use a controller, auto-aim is enabled. Console shooters have been doing this for a while. Some new pc games support this, too.
Machine guns are already illegal almost everywhere.
I'm pretty sure you have to pass a strict background check and pay a $200 fee, but I know it's possible. Same with silencers/suppressors. Otherwise, this man would be in jail by now.
After noting the higher "efficiencies" of privatizing education, Adam Smith still concludes that a more broadly educated public through public education (even at the expense of wasting a bit more money on less-motivated students) is ultimately for the public good.
The current school system in the US is a bloated government monopoly, indifferent to competing models of schooling. You pay for it through taxes whether you send your kids to public school, private school, or if you homeschool them (or even if you don't have kids at all). There are alternatives to public school in the US, but the government doesn't care. They get their money, even if you shell out for private school or quit your job to homeschool.
At the minimum, parents should receive vouchers equivalent in value to what the local public school system pays per pupil, vouchers that could be redeemed at private schools, or used for homeschooling expenses. This would put real pressure on crappy public schools to reform themselves or face starvation, unlike the misguided "No Child Left Behind Act".
Hell how many even OC or use liquid cooling? if it was more than 5% I'd be surprised.
Not too many people overclock, true. But I sure do; I found that a +20% overclock/overvolt on my aging Kentsfield CPU was well worth the +45% jump in peak power consumption, and it turns out Kentsfields really don't mind running at 80 degrees C under load. Framerates in Crysis 2 and L.A. Noire are playable now, and I didn't have to shell out for new cpu/mobo/ram. Oh and fwiw, it really pisses me off that you can't overclock low-end Intel CPUs anymore. I have fond memories of boosting my C2D e4300 from 1.8Ghz to 2.7Ghz. Props to AMD for unlocking the multipliers on basically all their CPUs these days.
However, a lot of people use cpu and especially gpu coolers with heatpipes, which is a liquid cooling of sorts. The "twin frozr" system MSI uses on my Radeon 7850 has heatpipes galore and keeps my card cool and quiet despite my overclocking.
Heatpipes were really a great idea, bringing many of the benefits of liquid cooling along in a compact, hassle-free package. No risk of leaks or water pumps failing, no need to construct a big radiator rack that requires a full-size or larger case...
Oh also, as awful as Netburst CPUs were (long execution pipeline? blech no thank you - I game...), I'd like to see someone overclock one to 10 Ghz for the lulz.
The Ferrari (or any exotic foreign sports car) can attract women, usually without even turning a wheel. A PC (even with that SSD), not so much.
The Ferrari will attract gold-diggers, and the fancy computer will attract girls who like computers. I'll take the computer.
Also if anyone is considering buying a Ferrari, don't. I'd suggest buying two Corvettes and two walkie-talkies - one for you, one for a friend!
Dying from a heart-attack mid-flight over the ocean and being summarily ejected = coolest burial at sea ever.
If you sit in front of me, you're likely to find my feet right behind yours. This is part of the reason I no longer fly. The rest being accounted for by the TSA nonsense.
Same here, pretty much. The security took way too long at McCarran Int'l last time I was there. Then the plane ride was uncomfortable, even for a little guy like me.
What we need is a new approach to passenger seating that takes into account security, comfort, and economy. How about this: Replace all the airline seats with padded tubes stacked like firewood (think Bruce Willis's trip to Phloston Paradise in The Fifth Element). Mix nitrous oxide in with the passenger tube's air to sedate them (I imagine it would be hard for a terrorist to hijack a plane while sedated). Safety procedure for an emergency landing is: you do nothing, because you're already limp (and therefore less likely to break bones) and you're wrapped in a giant padded burrito. Awesome. Maybe wake people up if you're ditching the plane in water, but otherwise, nah. Just eject their tubes a safe distance away from the aircraft upon landing.
Imagine boarding a plane in Los Angeles, lying down on a comfy pad, and then the next thing you know... you're waking up in New York, or Paris, or Moscow, hearing the local time and weather from the soothing, confident voice of a captain who you just *know* held an eight-hour orgy with the rest of the flight crew while everyone else was sedated.
Some people would throw up from the gas as they disembarked, sure, but that's a small price to pay. Plenty of people get airsick during turbulence and the airlines just give them a sack.
I am still wanting to see a viable long term storage solution for the waste...
We have one in the US. It's called "Yucca Mountain". It's all ready to go, but Sen. Harry Reid put the kibosh on it, because he's an idiot who unfortunately holds a lot of sway in the senate.
What about seek times in a low-RPM, high-capacity drive?
I have two 3.5" drives in my desktop. One is a Western Digital 250GB 7200 RPM ATA/133 drive from 2005, the other is a Western Digital 5400 1TB 5400 RPM "green" SATA 3.0gbps drive from around 2011.
The 5400 RPM drive is nice and fast for big files, but lord help you if you install a game on it. Load times are easily twice as long for a big AAA game like Crysis.
I checked and both drives have three platters. Is this what's killing my 5400 RPM drive?
Apple is one of the most popular brands ever and that's because it re-invented itself. Dell has a shot at re-branding itself with the right leadership.
I think you're right on the money there. Apple re-invented itself; Dell will re-brand itself.
When Apple was in a slump it transformed from a computer company locked in a race to the bottom - fighting beige-box Mac clones with beige boxes of their own - into a design company that produces its own ecosystem of high-margin computers and online services (iTunes store, iOS / OS X app stores). Apple acknowledges this; "Apple Computer" is now just "Apple", officially.
I don't own a Macbook, and I don't want one, but I can totally understand why they're selling like hotcakes: elegant and sturdy design, luxury status, vertical integration of hardware / software / internet services, and now retina displays... the list goes on. Love them or hate them, but Apple's computers stand out.
Dell, on the other hand? They're still making cheap generic beige boxes, except these days they're "piano black". I'm sure that's exactly what their corporate/government customers want, but the question then is, "How do you re-invent yourself when your customers just want blade servers, cheap desktops, and on-site service plans?" Dell already does those things well.
I'm guessing that Dell's idea of "re-inventing itself" will be to buy Alienware again, or to imitate Apple. Hopefully, they'll try something none of us thought of and prove me wrong in the process.
Oblig. Homer Simpson quote: "And we can't watch FOX because they have those chemical weapons plants in Syria..."
I live in a school zone that had a bad speeding problem.
Odds are you live in an area with a bad school zone problem. Or at least, you do if your city is anything like mine. In my area, school zones have a 25 mph speed limit ... ALL HOURS ALL DAYS. Kids are only crossing those streets for 2 hours a day max, and they have crossing guards to boot.
Wow... why would one need to rent a server? Doesn't anyone remember the golden age of gaming when online games came with server software pre-installed? For instance, most of the Quake servers were on gamers' machines. Pay for running a server? Maybe I'm just old but that sounds insane to me.
Monthly server costs can be pretty cheap, and for some games, you really do need a business-class server for smooth netplay. For example, I used to play a lot of Battlefield 2 - that's a game supporting up to 64 players (and that game only really came into its own with that many people playing). A lot of BF2 clans would have monthly membership dues to pay for server costs - I almost joined a couple of them, and they only wanted $8 per month from me. Considering that I played that game a good 100 hours a month back in 2006, it seemed like a pretty reasonable deal. However, I stopped playing that game when I realized my borderline obsession with it was screwing up my grades in school.
I saw the same thing back when AlterIW was offering a dedicated server alternative to the TERRIBLE matchmaking system in Modern Warfare 2.
I tried Weight Watchers and only lost 4 pounds over 4 weeks.
Now I'm on Google Watchers and I've gained 20 pounds in 2 weeks.
I pay about $0.09 / kWhr on average (depends how much I use per month). I once did the math on this and found that the power savings from upgrading my old hardware (overclocked core 2 quad pushing about 140W, 150W graphics card, multiple hard drives, several fans) to a modern sandy/ivy bridge system with an 80+ psu would take a few years (maybe 4?) to pay for itself in savings. That's a fairly long time in the computing world. When people ask me about buying a new computer to save on electricity, I generally advise them not to unless they're concerned about CO2 emissions from the local coal plant or if they're still on an Intel HeatBurst platform.
I live in Iowa, so your mileage may vary - I seem to recall reading that Germany averaged the equivalent of $0.20 / kWhr (!) a year or two ago.
As for your comment on cpu/psu fans getting less efficient, I feel I should share my secret: mesh filters on all air intakes on the case, plus semi-annual cleaning of dust on fan blades and heatsink fins with computer duster. This works wonders; I have fans nearing their 6th birthday in my PC and they're just fine, and I never see any big dust bunnies in there. Before I figured this out, my previous computer's fans were moaning and groaning all the time.
I don't think they have them on the consumer level graphics cards. It turned out that the consumer graphics cards were better for our needs since they had more and faster texture sampling units.
I recently bought a Radeon HD 7850 2GB card that I'm pretty sure has ECC. Cost was $200. It's pretty cool - if you overclock the memory too high, the card doesn't start crashing your games or anything, it just doesn't run any faster.
To my knowledge, all graphics cards with GDDR5 memory have ECC.
This BFG edition is a JOKE compared to the mods (100% made by volunteer work) I've been playing lately. I've seen volunteer effort replace almost ALL the textures with HD textures (very nicely done, looks like professional quality), add in bloom/HDR, add in parallax occlusion mapping (high-end computers only!), add in new monsters, and probably more I'm forgetting. Just get a $10 or $5 copy of the Doom 3 from 2004 and get some of these FREE mods, and the game will look so good you'll think it was made in 2010 or 2011 and it's TOTALLY worth playing it again with them installed. And if you're a pussyshit who plays with the room lights turned on and you don't understand the word "atmosphere", then YES, you can get a mod to tape a flashlight to your gun. A short list of the best mods (Note: these mods can be a son of a bitch to install, especially if you want more than one. I'd advise you just get the mod from the bottom-most URL if you want a painless experience):
Perfected Doom 3 (adds HDR bloom and other effects)
Wulfen (High-Def) Texture Pack (lots of HD textures and parallax maps for them)
HD Mod (e-z to install compilation of many other high-def mods)
Think about it... there can only be two kinds of people who behave according to "game theory":
-Economists
-Psychopaths
I'm planning on watching this BBC Documentary this weekend; it looks like the first segment discusses game theory.
Is your life that devoid of meaning that it needs the soothing animation effect to make it tolerable? It is like people who complain about a tearing effect when they move a window around... who the fuck cares? I select a window, drag it to where I want it and I want it done as fast possible and not as nice as possible.
Well, the tearing effect in particular bothers me because oftentimes I like to read the contents of a window while I am moving it. I think a window manager with functionality as the #1 priority should try as hard as possible to never obscure the contents of a window.
I know what you mean about desktop eye candy slowing things down... it's one of the reasons I made the switch from Mac OS X to Windows 7 a few years ago; Windows is more responsive, even with the unnecessary "aero" bullhooey enabled. Linux isn't really an option for me because I run an ATI (er, sorry, AMD) graphics card, and I hear that combination is a rarefied circle of hell.