The only thing I don't bother with is integrated graphics. (I have a 6800GT now, but I've always had an Nvidia of some kind.)
Onboard audio, nic, firewire, about a dozen USB ports, etc etc are (a) convenient and (b) tested together by the manufacturer - who also supply the drivers. At least, you'd hope so.
In summary, you might be able to find a bare board, but it's better to get an all-in-one and stick all your old bits and pieces in the cupboard for spares. Or sell them off, or use them to upgrade another box.
I agree. I held of getting a new mobile for about five years (the old one is a brick which makes calls, and that's all I need) This new phone is a fiddly PDA without a proper keyboard, a digital camera with lousy resolution and it doesn't make phone calls that well either... Yes, it has obscure multi-function buttons. Do I press the green or blue sideways L to make a call? Hell no, it's another sideways blue L leaning the other way. Oops, pressed the middle of the button instead of the 1/16" bevelled edge. Now it's doing something else. Did I just hang up? Did I just call someone? Damned if I know, I'll find out when the bill arrives.
All that money isn't going into space, it's being spent on Earth. And the people that money is going to (albeit indirectly) are spending it on housing, food, clothing, education and so on - so it's keeping THEM off the poverty line. And also the people teaching their kids, selling them cars and houses, assembling and shipping their TV sets and so on and on. It's a trickle down effect - keep pouring money in at the top, and people will keep spending it. And for the rare breed who just stick it in the bank, the bank will turn around and lend it to someone for a house, a car, whatever.
That's not even touching on the scientific benefits, or the intangible effect of pictures from the surface of a distant planet being beamed into our lounge rooms.
And even better, it's the next major city down the road from Perth... my home town!
(For overseas readers unfamiliar with Australia... Quote from Pacific Island Travel: Curving around the Great Australian Bight, the route across the Nullarbor is legendary and one of Australia's great road journeys. It is more than 2700km from Perth to Adelaide, about the same as the distance from London to Moscow.)
Just remember to pack some interesting reading material.
I write books in the comic SF genre, so you'd better believe I want to see a good film made out of one. My expectations weren't high, especially as I have such fond memories of the TV series. Sounds like they exceeded them.
Anyway, Alan Rickman as the voice of Marvin will be worth the admission price alone.
Well, what else do you expect when they puncture the skin? All that air's gonna come out in a rush, and we'll be visiting Mars without the benefit of rockets, ships or indeed, spacesuits.
It had better be (a) built as a male so [most] other sharks don't try and copulate with it or (b) fitted with shock absorbers so the cameras don't shake to pieces when all the other males start humping the life out of it.
Makes kids dumb? My seven-year old daughter learned how to build caves & buildings in the Morrowind construction kit by trial and error, and is now adding AI characters and messing about with the scripts for them. She's well versed in many cheat codes, and uses a whole bunch of console commands to dynamically load and move objects around while in the game. (And no, I didn't show her any of this. I printed a list of console commands from a web site - something like about 7 pages of them - and left her to it. I must admit, I was curious to see how she would interpret instructions like this: The formula is (Player->SetStat, xxx) were xxx is the number you want to power up too: example: ~ to bring up console; then (Player->SetStrength, 100) then press enter. You now have 100 str. These are the stats you can set: Strength, Intelligence, [...] and about another 100+)
Now, perhaps playing mario on a GBA for days on end could stunt your intellect, but the kind of stuff she's been figuring out in Morrowind for the past few months must surely be in a different league. Put it this way, eventually her school may get around to discussing programming (right now they're at the 'this is the back button in your web browser' stage) and when they do she'll probably put 1 and 1 together and get 10.
Sir Clive Sinclair used defective RAM in the ZX Spectrum way back in 1982. They were chips with only one bank working, but the computers were wired to only use that one bank.
quote: "To keep the prices down Sinclair used faulty 64K chips (internally 2 X 32K). All the chips in the 32K bank of RAM had to have the same half of the 64K chips working. A link was fitted on the pcb in order to choose the first half or the second half."
Remember, many of the best ideas have already been used.
At age 37 I've never taken illegal drugs and I've never been offered any*. According to the parent poster's stats, that means all my friends have.
Bastards!
* Of course, I may have been offered them but was too dumb or naive to know what the hell they were talking about.
P.S. Just for the record & for snooping carnivore type listening devices, I want to make it clear I have no intention of seeking or taking illegal drugs. My fiction is crazy enough as it is without the help of illicit substances.
1. I treasure my boxed sets of old UK television shows. I like to have and to hold, and having them available any time for a fee is NOT the same as choosing, buying, owning.
2. When my ADSL connection goes wonky and I can't get on the net I pop in a DVD and waste some time waiting for it to come back up. If they deliver my entertainment over ADSL I'm going to be foaming at the mouth when the damn thing falls over.
3. I will never put all my eggs in one basket.
4. I can browse DVDs on the shelf and pick up a couple when shopping. On the net I'm already bombarded with crap so how am I going to choose what to watch? Sometimes all you need is 3 bad movies and 1 good one to decide what to watch.
5. Never underestimate the power of impulse buying and a physical product. Many dotcoms did exactly that.
Didn't this already happen in another South American country? I thought I read something about a year ago on a similar subject, where VOIP was going to be illegal to protect the state-owned telecommunications company.
Actually I'm 6'4" and I weigh 200 lb, which isn't too bad for a 37-year-old guy.
I have an exercise bike next to my computer and if I want to watch an old show there's only one way I'll allow myself to do it - prop the laptop between the handlebars, put on the headphones and pedal my way through the thing. Effort vs reward is something I use all the time on myself. E.g. not allowing myself to go see Fellowship of the Ring until I'd finished writing and editing my second SF novel.
Finally, when it's often 100+ degrees farenheit outside you tend to find indoor pursuits. From time to time the temps hit 115+ which is about the right temp for sitting under an aircon and pushing the mouse around.
Here in Australia they stick watermarks on every program now. Even funnier - if you're watching widescreen you can see the regular 4:3 station logo, then another one to the right of it, then another watermark with an HDTV logo. Then they stick flashing banners across the bottom telling you about this really great program coming up.
You know, watching a decent movie on free to air in this country it's like viewing the Mona Lisa on a web site. I don't bother any more, I just pick up boxed sets of old UK TV shows off ebay. Faves so far - 7 years of Minder and 54 episodes of The Professionals
Slashdot Mirror
A jail term. Or if you're really lucky, a fine and a photo in the local paper. ;-)
Wasn't it Arnie in Total Recall? (Disclaimer: I may be totally and utterly wrong.)
Itf probably a fpelling error, or ffailing that, a total and utter fumbs-for-ffingers suck-up.
Bing bang? Sounds like it went off with a crash of cymbals.
The only thing I don't bother with is integrated graphics. (I have a 6800GT now, but I've always had an Nvidia of some kind.)
Onboard audio, nic, firewire, about a dozen USB ports, etc etc are (a) convenient and (b) tested together by the manufacturer - who also supply the drivers. At least, you'd hope so.
In summary, you might be able to find a bare board, but it's better to get an all-in-one and stick all your old bits and pieces in the cupboard for spares. Or sell them off, or use them to upgrade another box.
I agree. I held of getting a new mobile for about five years (the old one is a brick which makes calls, and that's all I need) This new phone is a fiddly PDA without a proper keyboard, a digital camera with lousy resolution and it doesn't make phone calls that well either... Yes, it has obscure multi-function buttons. Do I press the green or blue sideways L to make a call? Hell no, it's another sideways blue L leaning the other way. Oops, pressed the middle of the button instead of the 1/16" bevelled edge. Now it's doing something else. Did I just hang up? Did I just call someone? Damned if I know, I'll find out when the bill arrives.
This phone is like Win 3.1 skinned by Enro Rubik.
All that money isn't going into space, it's being spent on Earth. And the people that money is going to (albeit indirectly) are spending it on housing, food, clothing, education and so on - so it's keeping THEM off the poverty line. And also the people teaching their kids, selling them cars and houses, assembling and shipping their TV sets and so on and on. It's a trickle down effect - keep pouring money in at the top, and people will keep spending it. And for the rare breed who just stick it in the bank, the bank will turn around and lend it to someone for a house, a car, whatever.
That's not even touching on the scientific benefits, or the intangible effect of pictures from the surface of a distant planet being beamed into our lounge rooms.
And even better, it's the next major city down the road from Perth... my home town!
(For overseas readers unfamiliar with Australia... Quote from Pacific Island Travel: Curving around the Great Australian Bight, the route across the Nullarbor is legendary and one of Australia's great road journeys. It is more than 2700km from Perth to Adelaide, about the same as the distance from London to Moscow.)
Just remember to pack some interesting reading material.
... is off the menu.
I doubt anybody goes to great lengths to try and block text-based google adsense boxes (not sure if it's even possible, since they don't bother me.)
But should they introduce graphical ads...
I write books in the comic SF genre, so you'd better believe I want to see a good film made out of one. My expectations weren't high, especially as I have such fond memories of the TV series. Sounds like they exceeded them.
Anyway, Alan Rickman as the voice of Marvin will be worth the admission price alone.
Well, what else do you expect when they puncture the skin? All that air's gonna come out in a rush, and we'll be visiting Mars without the benefit of rockets, ships or indeed, spacesuits.
It had better be (a) built as a male so [most] other sharks don't try and copulate with it or (b) fitted with shock absorbers so the cameras don't shake to pieces when all the other males start humping the life out of it.
Makes kids dumb? My seven-year old daughter learned how to build caves & buildings in the Morrowind construction kit by trial and error, and is now adding AI characters and messing about with the scripts for them. She's well versed in many cheat codes, and uses a whole bunch of console commands to dynamically load and move objects around while in the game. (And no, I didn't show her any of this. I printed a list of console commands from a web site - something like about 7 pages of them - and left her to it. I must admit, I was curious to see how she would interpret instructions like this: The formula is (Player->SetStat, xxx) were xxx is the number you want to power up too: example: ~ to bring up console; then (Player->SetStrength, 100) then press enter. You now have 100 str. These are the stats you can set: Strength, Intelligence, [...] and about another 100+)
Now, perhaps playing mario on a GBA for days on end could stunt your intellect, but the kind of stuff she's been figuring out in Morrowind for the past few months must surely be in a different league. Put it this way, eventually her school may get around to discussing programming (right now they're at the 'this is the back button in your web browser' stage) and when they do she'll probably put 1 and 1 together and get 10.
Cheers
Simon
Wouldn't that be a Beosheep cluster?
Sir Clive Sinclair used defective RAM in the ZX Spectrum way back in 1982. They were chips with only one bank working, but the computers were wired to only use that one bank.
Old Computers Museum
quote: "To keep the prices down Sinclair used faulty 64K chips (internally 2 X 32K). All the chips in the 32K bank of RAM had to have the same half of the 64K chips working. A link was fitted on the pcb in order to choose the first half or the second half."
Remember, many of the best ideas have already been used.
A new book on the way: Mensa for Dummies.
I'm not in the UK but they did knight him. Pity they didn't pawn him instead.
Spot on, including my emigrating to Australia from the UK.
;-)
I'm Simon, BTW. Hal Spacejock is the character in my SF novels, but I use his name because he needs all the publicity he can get
Rincon = 'corner' in spanish. Maybe Microsoft do have a sense of humour after all.
At age 37 I've never taken illegal drugs and I've never been offered any*. According to the parent poster's stats, that means all my friends have.
Bastards!
* Of course, I may have been offered them but was too dumb or naive to know what the hell they were talking about.
P.S. Just for the record & for snooping carnivore type listening devices, I want to make it clear I have no intention of seeking or taking illegal drugs. My fiction is crazy enough as it is without the help of illicit substances.
1. I treasure my boxed sets of old UK television shows. I like to have and to hold, and having them available any time for a fee is NOT the same as choosing, buying, owning.
2. When my ADSL connection goes wonky and I can't get on the net I pop in a DVD and waste some time waiting for it to come back up. If they deliver my entertainment over ADSL I'm going to be foaming at the mouth when the damn thing falls over.
3. I will never put all my eggs in one basket.
4. I can browse DVDs on the shelf and pick up a couple when shopping. On the net I'm already bombarded with crap so how am I going to choose what to watch? Sometimes all you need is 3 bad movies and 1 good one to decide what to watch.
5. Never underestimate the power of impulse buying and a physical product. Many dotcoms did exactly that.
Didn't this already happen in another South American country? I thought I read something about a year ago on a similar subject, where VOIP was going to be illegal to protect the state-owned telecommunications company.
Actually I'm 6'4" and I weigh 200 lb, which isn't too bad for a 37-year-old guy.
I have an exercise bike next to my computer and if I want to watch an old show there's only one way I'll allow myself to do it - prop the laptop between the handlebars, put on the headphones and pedal my way through the thing. Effort vs reward is something I use all the time on myself. E.g. not allowing myself to go see Fellowship of the Ring until I'd finished writing and editing my second SF novel.
Finally, when it's often 100+ degrees farenheit outside you tend to find indoor pursuits. From time to time the temps hit 115+ which is about the right temp for sitting under an aircon and pushing the mouse around.
Here in Australia they stick watermarks on every program now. Even funnier - if you're watching widescreen you can see the regular 4:3 station logo, then another one to the right of it, then another watermark with an HDTV logo. Then they stick flashing banners across the bottom telling you about this really great program coming up.
You know, watching a decent movie on free to air in this country it's like viewing the Mona Lisa on a web site. I don't bother any more, I just pick up boxed sets of old UK TV shows off ebay. Faves so far - 7 years of Minder and 54 episodes of The Professionals