FortranDragon

I'll second the recommendation of Crucial. I buy most of my RAM from them and never had a problem. Kingston is another good place to buy RAM. I also think you are doing the right thing and not going for the 'high performance' RAM that seems to be the in thing these days. I've tried it and found that it didn't give me any practical advantage over the standard & reliable RAM.

I'm using a self-built Franken-clone: 3 GHz Pentium 4 HT on an ASUS P4C 800 Deluxe motherboard 1.5 Gigabytes RAM Geforce 6800 GT (AGP) connected to a Dell 2405FPW monitor Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS connected to a Logitech Z-5500 5.1 speaker set Seagate 7200.8 160 GB SATA hard drive Everything else ( )

http://www.griskey.com/music.php

Does binding the games to one CPU work?

Are you able to try it with some other sound card? The X-Fi is known to be problematic with games. (That's typical for a new generation Creative product.)

1) Some of the concepts aren't unique (Galactic Empire), but some (desert planet/sandworm, city as planet) probably do have specific and known origins. I just find it sad that GL could have helped SF get a bit more academic respect by pointing out that while Golden Age SF had lots of crap, there was gold in them thar hills, err, pulps. How SF moved from its crude origins to something that was thought provoking and just plain fun. 2) Perhaps the Force is just a force and all the speculation in the SW universe is just a projection of values and beliefs. An attempt to make sense of the universe and why things happen (usually bad things) to people. I have no idea what the turtles represent. I imagine a follower of Derrida would be willing to do a deconstruction on them for you. ^_^

The thrust of the article wasn't that Campbell wrote all of his books after Star Wars came out, but that, but that Joseph Campbell and GL found it quite convenient to pimp each other once Star Wars was a huge success. Before this Joseph Campbell was an obscure academic. I saw Star Wars (when it was just Star Wars) when it was first released. People forget just how much fun the movie was compared to the other stuff on the screen at the time. The commentaries talked about how Star Wars harkened back to the B-movie space and/or cowboy serials. Joseph Campbell, Jung, etc. were never mentioned. As far as reading Joseph Campbell's books (or one of his books) in college, yes, I can see that happening. College is, after all, a time of reading many *assigned* books. ;-) As far as rereading it while writing Star Wars, well, I would prefer to see a quote from that era where he said that. Given the big deal he has made of Joseph Campbell I would not trust any reference from later on. People can and do 'retcon' their memories. GL certainly has the tendency to revise past things.

Umm, no. ;-) It looks like Campbell and Lucas created their little lovefest *after* the original Star Wars movie became a cultural phenomenon. George provided the popularity and Joseph provided the academic 'blessings'.

Yes, many people try to use, misuse really, science to support their fervid positions. That's just as bad as someone who ignores the facts in front of them because of a zealous belief. God (the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present version) and science has more to about the creation of the universe and the way it works. Invoking God when there are simpler explanations (that work) is a big problem. Science tends towards simple, robust explanations over more complex explanations (assuming both work equally). The problem with God is that it really doesn't explain anything. One just waves their hands and says "God willed it. The End.". Since God becomes an extraordinary claim it requires extraordinary evidence that God actually did this. Science 'wants' to know why God is a better fit over the simpler non-God explanation of the facts. (This also skips the fact that removing God removes mankind from the pinnacle of Creation. A fact that upsets some people.) Science is important because it describes our capabilities and our limits. Knowing our limits and trying to cope/bypass them is one of greatest sources of creativity. For example, man, as he is born is unable to fly by his own physicality. By using our physical intellect man has been able to build a machine (which completely accurate communication and shared perceptions, I might add ;-)) to fly. A machine solely powered by the human body. By letting our creativity be spurred on by our limits we achieved something grand.

Science isn't trying to find the Ultimate Truth. Science As Path To Ultimate Truth seems more of Marxist/Leninist gross-rationalizing corruption of science if I remember my history correctly. Scientists attempt to use science to understand the workings of the physical world, not necessarily everything. Morality, religion, creativity, values, etc. aren't an area of science. While science may give us a better understanding of our physical nature (for example, certain brain injuries leading to sociopathic tendencies), science itself knows its limits.

I replayed the game as a female character and I think that's my favorite line. So very Atton. :-D

1. Actually, according to your world view -- by your own definitions -- you don't "perfectly understand" my way of thinking. You'd have to use *my* world view to do that. ;-) In fact, your own understanding of your own theory would be flawed. I think that's what I reject in the end about that particular world view. It is one of futility and despair. I mean, why bother with trying to learn anything or communicate anything. It's going to always be a failure. I'd rather have a more positive outlook. Yes, we'll make mistakes, but we can learn from them and understand things perfectly.

I voted for Malak because he's such a classic space-opera villain. He added a sense of _fun_ as an over the top bad guy. (His evil laugh reminded me of the H.A.R.M. agents in NOLF2 trying to come up with a villainous laugh. ;-)) However, I do think Kreia was a better villain. She's subtle, manipulative, and _personal_. You get to know much more about her over the course of the game.

I think you're confusing the fallibility of us with the system of science. Just because I botch making a violin does not mean that violin making is inherently flawed. Sometimes our understanding of things takes time and effort. Science builds upon the earlier works of others. It is generally the process of accretion and not mass 'blinding flashes of insight'. Newtonian physics didn't stop being useful for everyday things after Einstein came along. While relativity handled the common cases and more 'edge' cases it is overkill for determining the arc of a thrown baseball. No, science will never answer everything (for example, moral issues), but it will eventually tell us how the physical universe works. The power of science is that because it is testable, because it is open to new information science is self-correcting and it allows us to overcome our own fallibility. The thing is, I can point you towards the computer you are using to post to this board. :-D If you want to prove that human perception is so fallible that we can't trust our communication with others or that we can't share our perceptions accurately, then you'll need to explain away every manufactured item around us for starters.

No, I'm not using science to define science. I'm telling you what science *is*. How to arrive at science. You seem confused by proof. No, you can't prove a _negative_, but you can prove something does happen. Start with the same conditions, repeat the same steps, and get the same conclusion then you have science. It is this repeat ability, this testability, the verifiability of an experiment that makes things scienitific. If something fails and you don't get the same results then you go back and look at your experiment. Did you screw it up? Was something else different in the conditions? Etc. Also, you seem hung up on the freshman psychology apparent paradox of perception and communication. When you start to speculate that our perceptions and understanding of the world is so fallible as to make science a matter of faith and not one of describing the actual workings of the universe, well, I have to ask you for the extraordinary evidence to back up your speculation. It is an extraordinary claim, so it would need extraordinary evidence to overcome, say, the evidence around that has come about since, oh, the Industrial Revolution. ;-)