neckthrough

Yup, 60Hz on CRTs is agonizing. It's a lot better on LCDs, but I've noticed that even LCD panels with ~16ms response times tend to exhibit noticeable ghosting in fast games. The idea is interesting, but we're quite far from realizing it IMO. I wonder if it's possible to come up with a hybrid approach, where your local client handles quick local graphics updates (bullets, spell effects, body animation) while the remote server renders the environment.

Unfinished games that I intend to get to get back to eventually: - Xenosaga - Final Fantasy X - Command and Conquer III - Ninja Gaiden II - Fallout - Half Life 2: Episode 2 - Bring Down The Sky (Mass Effect expansion) - Metal Gear Solid 2 - Jak and Daxter - Indigo Prophecy Unfinished games that I don't think I have the inclination to get back to: - Baldur's Gate II - Neverwinter Nights - Grand Theft Auto III - Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - Dead Rising - Fable - Forza - NFS Most Wanted - Gears Of War

Boot from a Ubuntu Live disco and then find your files, they should be there. Why you folks are hell bent on using linux for a windows issue is beyond me. How about send him to a win32 boot disk that does the SAME thing so you don't have to confuse the guy any more by using another OS? Linux peeps trying to ram it down our throats every chance they get... Here is a windows util boot disk: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/news.html or a more bare bones iso http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ hope that helps How ironic... the UBCD disk you linked to started off from the syslinux project. The CD itself boots into a tiny Linux kernel running on a FAT filesystem.

If you have a free partition then its probably best to install directly on it. Reboot the machine and boot with the Ubuntu CD, you should be in the installer. Feel free to ask for tips!

The sequence is right, but do you know if you want to do a partition install or a wubi install? If you're doing a partition install, then Ubuntu will overwrite the windows bootloader, but this is what you want because Ubuntu's bootloader (GRUB) can boot both OS's. If you're doing a wubi install, then Ubuntu will simply add an entry for itself into the Windows bootloader's menu.

That's why in a default install it comes with 5 browsers, 3 office like suits, 952 text editors, 10 media players, 4 email clients, 3 IM clients, dozen game applets and we have not even gotten to the server tools yet? If MS did that we'd never hear the end of it... And yet fits on a single 700MB CD-ROM? I love it when you confront the linux folks with hypocrisy they try to change the discussion rather then say 'yup... our bad'. BTW 'bloat' in this context is not defined by the size of the application but by the sheer number of unneeded applications. Change the discussion? Hardly. My point was that despite all the "unneeded" stuff you talk about, a well-rounded distro fits on a single CD-ROM, so I fail to understand the problem. An Ubuntu installation takes less time than a WinXP installation, so what is harm the "bloated" Ubuntu distribution causing you? FWIW I never accused Windows of unneeded software bloat (yeah Dell machines ship with a ton of crapware but that's Dell's fault, not Microsoft's). If anything, I'd say Windows ships with too *few* useful applications. I think a compiler, a standards-compliant browser, a useful text/code editor, an ssh client and a decent office/productivity suite are things that I would definitely appreciate in a default Windows distribution. Also keep in mind that your definition of "unneeded" might be very different from some other user's definition. It seems to me that Ubuntu does a very good job of balancing multiple users' needs into the single CDROM for the distro, while providing the remainder via repositories.

That's why in a default install it comes with 5 browsers, 3 office like suits, 952 text editors, 10 media players, 4 email clients, 3 IM clients, dozen game applets and we have not even gotten to the server tools yet? If MS did that we'd never hear the end of it... And yet fits on a single 700MB CD-ROM?

I think I'd like Shepherd to die, if only to piss off the idiot fanbois over at the Bioware forums.

http://www.giantbomb.com/news/mass-effect-...=home,home-news I wasn't expecting that. Color me... surprised. Trailer's also at Bioware's site, but it seems to be down atm: http://masseffect.bioware.com/teaser/index.html

Thanks I know I was being facetious. My bad, I missed the 1's after the !'s

Steam's hardware survey is not an invisible nefarious data retrieval system. You are explicitly asked if you want to carry out the survey and send the results.

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/15/145252

Not sure if this has been posted already... http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/02/13...ty-17-part-one/

I also hated the looooooooooooooong load times. But otherwise it was an awesome game.

Larrabee is an entirely different animal, don't confuse it with the integrated stuff Intel's been making all these years. It's targeted at the high-end.

You somewhat proved my point by using 2 dinosaur games as a example. But yes thats my point, linux is not a gaming platform. It can do games but thats not its main goal or function. Web or related server sure does a good job, gaming box not so much. I think everyone agrees that Linux is not a gaming platform, but the point here is that this is NOT because of anything inherent to the OS that makes it un-amenable for gaming. It's not a gaming platform because because nobody compiles or optimizes their games for it. The few games that do get compiled natively end up performing well.

Agreed. Now that's warped logic. From what I've read, Win 7 even in Beta form seems to be quite polished. MS is moving from Beta to RC to Release at a very fast pace not necessarily because of marketing factors, but also because of the stability of the product. Win 7 is really the release version of the Alpha/Beta program that was called Windows Vista. I know you were exaggerating to prove a point, but your analogy was way off IMHO. We'll probably see a couple of tweaks here and there, that's all. Yeah well any kind of brand zealotry is silly. I haven't seen that many Linux zealots though, I think *most* users fully understand its strengths and weaknesses. Plus, undeserved praise and fanboyism is hard to sustain for a product that anyone can instantly download and evaluate for themselves free of cost. Edit: In other Ubuntu news, HP has put together a slick new interface for their netbooks: http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/02/04/hp...ace-for-ubuntu/

Nobody in their right mind would ever consider Linux to be an attractive platform for Windows games (or any other Windows applications for that matter), so lets not get into meaningless debates. That wasn't the point of the article (or the thread). Getting back on topic, Rhomal, do you dispute the data provided in the linked article?

Hehe yeah. It appears to me that it's essentially ext3/4 that's stealing the show here. I didn't know about Win7's indexing. I do wonder how the results would turn out once the indexing finishes (assuming the reviewer ignored this).

http://www.tuxradar.com/content/benchmarke...ta-vs-windows-7

It uses Wubi. The entire Ubuntu virtual filesystem lives inside a single file on the Windows NTFS filesystem. This is similar to a virtual machine disk image, but in this case only the filesystem is virtualized, so you really do reboot into a Linux kernel running on raw hardware. All filesystem calls have to go through an additional layer of NTFS translation. My understanding is this results in a ~15% penalty for all disk accesses, but other than that it'll run as fast as a native Ubuntu installation.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/22/1914201

You should really try out one of the new Ubuntu-derived distros. The *complete* installation procedure from the CD (provided you do not want any fancy partitioning) is as follows: Pop in the disc and wait for the live CD to boot into a fully functional Ubuntu environment. Double-click on the "Install" icon. Answer 5-6 straightforward questions (e.g., time zone, confirmation to automatically partition drive, admin passwd) Fire up firefox and browse teh internets, check your email, edit some docs *while* the installer is doing its thing. It will ask you to reboot when its done. Reboot. It's incredibly smooth and painless. I've installed Linux on tens of machines in the RedHat 5.x days, and I know the pain you'd have to go through. Today's distros (esp. Ubuntu) are in an entirely different league. It is much less painful than a Win XP installation. Once your system is up and running, getting more software via apt is also incredibly painless.

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/windows-7-beta.ars/1 I'm definitely optimistic. No cure for the bloat or device incompatibilities, but things look nice on the UI front.

That's unfortunate (note to self: read complete article before posting link )... but not a deal breaker for me. In other news,