taks

yeah, it seems to me like 5-channel surround in a 2-point speaker system would be a waste. i'm not sure how it would split the signals up to do 5-channel since you can't get any spatial separation. my guess is that sony dropped them because they didn't sound any better than stereo. i suppose with DSP some spatial tricks could be played, but you'd either need big earphones, or a system capable of doing the emulation on 2 speakers anyway. imagine testing those: "press 5 if it sounds like the following tone is coming from behind you to the left"... taks

simple mechanical issue on wear and tear. desktop HDDs are bigger and more durable, and most people chuck them and upgrade before the mechanical issues become apparent (the 7200s probably wear out faster on desktops, too, it's just not a big deal if the 7200 wears out in 4 years instead of 5 for the 5400, for example). i'm on my first laptop and i think it has a 5400 so i probably won't be able to make any judgments based on experience alone. as i recall, the 10000 rpm SCSI desktop drives did wear out noticeably quicker, but it's been a looong while since i read about them. that's really what i was getting at... that and the whole application dependent thing. when you're using word or something you won't see any difference. i am surprised that there would be much of a difference at all, however, if you assume the same interface (i.e. 1.5 Gb/s SATA). taks

hard to say whether the driver is the cause of the error (i.e. it's just plain broken) or an effect from an incompatibility between the driver and SP1. i'd guess the latter, but that's just a guess. taks

vista is pretty stable for me and i push its limits. i don't run any games on my laptop, however (only 12.1"). 7200 vs. 5400: it's a mechanical wear and tear issue. laptop drives are smaller than desktops so a higher spindle speed makes it harder to get the same durability (plus, the 7200 will run hotter). the difference in speed shouldn't be noticeable (you're probably limited by the SATA or whatever interface more than the spindle speed of the drive). taks

almost exactly the same for me with 32-bit XP... that's just over 3 GB or so. taks

that'll be app dependent. however, there is some sort of "emulation" because the OS has to deal with the fact that the code was written in a native 32-bit OS. emulation is probably a misnomer since, as you note, the CPU itself is already 64-bit and x86 compatible. the numerical values in all the code are already all 64-bit most likely (some 128-bit) because the processors have been for some time, but compilers had to deal with that up-front to get the 64-bit values working in a 32-bit OS. i would guess that most programs that do suffer would probably be OK simply recompiling under the 64-bit OS (and some debug to remove the problems that creates). taks

there's another thread in which this is discussed. 32-bit OSes will see somewhere between 3 and 3.5 GB, depending upon your configuration. it is unknown whether winders actually uses this and what is listed is only what is available to the user, not the total being recognized. technically a 32-bit OS is capable of addressing all of 4 GB, it just doesn't find it or recognize it for whatever reason. well, aside from the ability to see all of your memory, not many at the moment. mostly detriments, actually. driver support sucks, emulation mode for 32-bit programs is slower than running in native 32-bit, and most programs aren't ready for 64-bit prime-time anyway. there's probably also a lot of compatibility issues though i cannot say from experience (have not upgraded yet), nor have i heard from anyone that has actually made the switch. i'm sure there are plenty of apps that will benefit from a 64-bit OS, though given that we're all gamers, most of what we care about is the performance of games, and we don't stand to gain, IMO. this will change soon, though i don't know how soon... taks

i did not though my wife pulled a semi-evil one on her mother. she called mom and said "could you open the front door so i can get in?" mom was a bit stunned given that she lives in up-state NY and we're in CO. both mom and i agreed that my wife was being mean to a little old lady. my buddy's birthday was yesterday. i'm guessing he had a hard road growing up, though my mother was born on xmas day and she never admitted till recently that she probably got the short end of the stick w.r.t. gifts every year. i'm a july baby so my parents were always solvent again by the time the summer event rolled around... taks

yes, normally, but MATLAB is not really "programming" in the same sense as writing C-code, it is an interpreted language (not unlike basic). i.e. lessons learned from making MATLAB more efficient only really benefit future MATLAB programming efforts. MATLAB is unique in this respect. you have no control over where it puts your data. if you're writing C-code, you malloc() the memory first, so there are never any issues. if you don't have enough memory, you simply don't get to malloc() the data. MATLAB is slaved to the OS which controls memory, so even when you have large amounts of memory left, it may be fragmented to the point you can't use it properly. tons, actually. my laptop was a dog at 1 GB. taks

hmmm, i shoot pool with a guy named mark morgan. he's certainly one of the best pool players i've ever faced, but he's not a composer. taks

ouch... that was just plain mean, laozi. happy bday, bok, you graphics ho you (envy and hate fill me too)! of course, i don't have time to play anything but solitaire so graphics would be a waste for me anyway... taks

hehe, interestingly enough, legos star wars: complete saga (PS3) has several sections like that. my son and i must have done the pod-race a dozen times before we realized that we had to win the race else it would start over. i ended up having to drop my son out (he's not even 5 yet) so i could get through it by myself. the same problem when running through the building that was blowing up around you (right before annakin becomes darth vader). the last jump has you jumping into a section that you cannot see, yet you are expected to land on safe ground before getting through the next section (with a cut-scene). often, even though seemingly landing on a good place, it would simply restart you. both john and i were screaming at the tv. i should add, the camera angles in this game are horrendous, often obscuring important details. taks

mine has been behaving as well. it's almost as if the VPN has "learned" that i don't care. i'm almost afraid to open it again since it might decide it needs to check every time i switch pages again. i need the danged thing since it allows me to access the IEEE Xplore database (lots of papers), which is why i have not deleted it. one more month of that and i'll be done, and VPN will get the boot. taks

hmmm, never knew that, mkreku. i often turn my browser off when i leave work, but not always. i'll keep this in mind for the future. i'm still using IE at home, so i don't notice this issue, though mostly because i recently rebuilt my pooter after a critical HDD failure around the time of xmas. i simply haven't gotten around to updating all my software. firefox regularly auto-installs updates, so maybe you picked one up and that was the change, btw. i've got mine set to ask, so i always known when it is updating (which happens rather frequently, btw). taks

hmmm, i have that issue on linux systems, which is generally related to poor driver support from graphics manufacturers (which is improving, however), but not with winders systems. i am using firefox (and thunderbird for my mailer) on this machine, which is perfectly clear. for vpn on vista, "control panel"->"network and sharing center"->"manage network connections" and you should have your vpn listed there. i don't have one set up at the moment though i'd guess that you simply need to click on the icon for it and remove it under some properties tab. taks

this could be your problem though since it does not happen with any other sites, i'd say it is a questionable cause. the problem with VPN that i have seen (regularly) is that certain sites will automatically bring up the VPN "logon" screen expecting you to connect through it rather than your already dedicated connection. not all sites do this, though when it happens it prevents the current site from loading. i have searched and searched an i cannot figure out a way to disable this so it only appears when i ask it to. it's a total pain. it's also somewhat random when it decides it needs to connect for you. simply deleting the VPN icon from your desktop is not sufficient for removing the connection, btw. you need to go into your network/internet connections dialog (for XP "control panel"->"network and internet connections"->"setup or change your internet connections") and remove the VPN connection for it to be gone... taks

clearly that thing has a sense of balance, i.e. it can sense the vector towards which it is falling and place a leg appropriately to stop or stem the rate of the fall. most previous walking demonstrations i've seen only work on flat surfaces without anything impeding the direction of travel. this is a hella breakthrough, IMO. taks

could simply be that whatever route you're taking to get to obsidian is having issues. that would explain why some sites work (on a different hub or piece of the backbone) and others do not. not a whole lot you can do to fix that, btw. taks

there's plenty of non-religious holidays (in spite of the implication of the word holiday). labor day, presidents' day, 4th of july... then, my all-time favorite, friday. taks

i should note that while i'm not the religious type (uh, athiest, actually), i do "celebrate" easter with my family. i don't see it as containing any religious significance, though my wife may since she is catholic. my son will not be indoctrinated one way or the other till he is old enough to formulate valid questions... 10 is my guess. i think he "knows" about the concepts of god and hell, etc., and he probably even knows that easter is something significant (since everyone makes a big deal of it), but he's not up on it like i was when i was a child. anyway, our celebration today consisted of 2 1/2 lbs. of beef tenderloin browned on all sides then tossed in the oven for 15 minutes or so. doesn't take much other than salt and pepper to make a tenderloin delectible. i added aged cheddar mashers (white potatoes, btw), and this KILLER mushroom deal... ****akes, portobellas (criminis) and white caps with onion and some brandy and cream. mmmmm... with a salad and a good bread, we were set. apple streusel from the store for dessert and i was stuffed. to me, easter is just another excuse to cook a fantastic meal and eat it with my family. taks

because a lot of people don't have large enough vocabularies to understand the meaning of the word hypocrite. taks

be careful with the install/config on IE games. there are "block" issues if you select anything other than the default 16-bit rendering (uh, not sure what the actual tick-box is called) on newer systems. there are various solutions running around to get around the problem, but you'll know right away if you have it when a bird flies by with a black square around it. software BLT seems to work for some, but it did not for me (plus it slows the system down considerably). item variety in HoW was a problem not in actual content, but implementation. i seem to recall there was a bug with the way the randomizer worked for loot that resulted in only a subset of the items being available to the player. i think this was fixed in trials of the luremaster, which adds additional patching as well as more items. IWD2 is a loot-fest beyond any other IE game (except perhaps throne of bhaal). taks

hardware configuration plus OS settings plus miscellaneous software that is also running. w.r.t. the latter, sometimes it's not so much that program A or program B have a conflict with the OS/hardware combination, but the two may conflict with each other under the given OS/hardware combination. this makes a developer's task much more daunting since there is no way to know what each user will have on his system. taks

i think it is safe to say nightshade plays far too many games. taks edit: better to say that nightshade spends far too much time on a computer doing actual computer things.

originally, neither did i and i had read reports of 3.5 GB so i was hoping. that said, the "3.5 GB" might have been actually "3.5 billion bytes" which is closer to 3.2 GB in reality. once i installed, and got everything going, i was a bit disappointed. there is a big improvement over 2 GB either way. once i go to a 64-bit OS that won't be an issue and i'll likely upgrade to 8 GB as well. from a game standpoint going to 8 GB won't be a big deal, but from a MATLAB standpoint, it will be huge. i have to play a lot of tricks to get simulations to run properly because each vector requires contiguous memory space. when vectors are double-precision, complex (i.e. 128 bits per element) with several million elements and a dozen or so vectors/matrices, even at 4 GB i have a hard time finding contiguous memory blocks that large. taks