Humodour

So Wyoming is a pit of oppression huh? How about this? http://www.mormonlawyers.com/2009/02/same-...efeated-in.html Oh, and since you seem to be incapable of seeing beyond political sterotypes there are nineteen democrats in the Wyoming state house. Many voted FOR the ban. That means it was the REPUBLICANS who defeated this. And in case you didn't know (and in your case you seem to know nothing you didn't read on some left wing blog) Wyoming recognizes gay marriage. The reason is there is a strong libertarian streak in people in that region. You know the ideology you routinely castigate? The one where people are free to do as they please with their lives and money? I can see how you would hate that. Take a chill pill sunshine and read the thread. Nobody mentioned Republicans or Democrats except you. I'm just pointing out that Wyoming is fairly socially conservative (which is pretty stupid to try and deny), and Iowa is somewhere between California and Wyoming, so Iowa's not the first place you'd look if you were expecting advances in social liberty, but it's good to see nonetheless. Oh, and that "left-wing blog" you were referring to? Yeah, the guy's a hard-core Libertarian. Which is beautifully ironic.

lol. epic fail: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09...2&art_pos=6

ramza: The Wii isn't so much about the revolutionary experience as it is about owning a copy of Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros because I never have before, even though I've played them numerous times (even if I could find an N64 + those games, it'd probably break within a year anyway).

Ah yes, I just noticed the high-end DDR3 has three channels. Cool, though even than only 1 or 2 channels would be used on average just as dual-channel DDR typically only operates half as fast as theoretically possible (i.e. as fast as one channel), making the speed increase kind of deceptive, no? Seems similar to the hype about multiple CPU's/cores. When would having an extra channel actually be tangibly useful? Movies? Games? Data mining? Edit: Err, anyway, onto CPU and graphics. Any suggestions?

Hmm. That's surprising. I actually would've thought that RAM is one of the main performance bottlenecks these days (given CPU speed is esentially irrelevant as they're so fast they're idle most of the time waiting for cache/etc to respond) but this benchmark suggests that with DDR2 RAM, both doubling speed and halving latency combined give at best a 25% performance boost, but typically more like about 5%. http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&articID=472 Given DDR3 is exactly the same RAM with exactly the same latency but twice as fast bus I/O bandwidth, it'd seem like using DDR3 over equivalent double-speed DDR2 would likely net you even less than the 5% boost the double-speed DDR2 got! Ouch. It's hilarious because DDR4 comes out in 2012 which has a further 2x clock multiplier but still has the same latency as the DDR2 of the same clock. I imagine it'd give a similar miniscule performance boost probably at a significant cost in price, temperature and power use. DDR2 it is, eh? Err, although the above doesn't hold for the Mac Mini I mentioned because it uses a special model of the Geforce 9400 built into the motherboard. I.e. the GPU and CPU share memory, making the otherwise minor increase in bus access speed suddenly noticeable.

This makes me drool: Apple Mac Pro: - 2 Quad Core Intel Xeon Nehalem CPU's @ 2.93 Ghz - 32 Gb DDR3 RAM @ 1066 Mhz - 4 Geforce GT 120's @ 512MB RAM each Clocks in at just under $20,000. Hmm. Something tells me this would be faster: http://www.tycrid.com/?page_id=85

I just got my $950 stimulus payment from the government and I figured now is as good a time as any to buy a new PC. Problem is, last I heard DDR1 was uber cool, and the Athlon 1600+ was the ultimate gamer CPU. And it was unheard of to find over 256mb of RAM on a graphics card... except those weird Voodoo cards which were 10 years ahead of their time. So, what's the dealio? - I'm aiming for 2 (ideally 4) gb of DDR3 RAM. - I want a graphics card that can play recent FPS games moderately well. - I want at least two cores (no more than 4), clocking at least 2Ghz (but ideally 2.6 or more) Is this feasible under $1000 AUD? Or should I just get the Mac Mini with Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2 Ghz, 2Gb DDR3 RAM @ 1066 Mhz and a nVidia 9400? It's $1032 AUD with my student discount. It wouldn't play the latest games but I've got a backlog anyway (NWN2, Witcher, Bioshock, etc).

They've probably got 1 nuke tops and it'd probably take out a small mall. Australia's got conventional fuel-air bombs more powerful. But seriously, here's a good article on how ****ed up the country is from Al Jazeera: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pac...2144110777.html

Why exactly does North Korea still exist (and not in the physical sense)? Even their closest communist allies find them a pain in the arse and impediment to good relations with the West. I mean war for 60 years while your neighbour and 'enemy' becomes the an economic superpower and you become the laughing stock of the world as your people starve. Really? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7984016.stm nothing but lol.

I decide to buy a Wii and a PC and that makes me a... what, PS3 fanboy? That thar is some twisted logic mate. I make no secret of the fact that I think the Xbox 360 is a poor console, however I'd ask that you and Nightshape to take your fanboy wars elsewhere. It's not hard to start a thread called "MY CUNSUL IS BETTAR TEN URS N00b".

Most likely. I saw Sawyer posting about this earlier.

Hmm, yeah, I do have a lot of mates around so we'd make good use of the Wii. Looks like I'll buy a Wii (we'll be using wheels and the nunchucks I think, Ramza) and the first few components for a new desktop. PS3 is tempting but at that price I could get an equivalent computer anyway AND I could code and surf on that (plus it would play my old games!). I'm not at all interested in an Xbox, sorry. End of story.

And why is that exactly? Why do you think? Because they're not exactly a socially progressive state, that's why. They're not as bad as, say, Wyoming, but they're not exactly at the forefront of democracy. I found this amusing, though:

You don't really need any anti-virus software or firewalls. Anti-virus software is usually only about 25% successful most of the time anyway, and Linux is firewalled by default (though you can improve this). You've also got security by obscurity (i.e. Linux viruses are amazingly rare). Also you don't have root (admin) rights by default, adding yet another protection layer. Your mileage may vary. Regarding web browsing: uh, clunky? Firefox on Linux is exactly the same as Firefox on Windows. I don't understand your point. If you haven't got Firefox, go to the package manager and type it in the search field. Perhaps you actually mean incorrect fonts? You can download proprietary fonts in the package manager (Arial, Times New Roman, etc), but it's illegal for them to ship directly for free. You'll also want to download music codecs from the package manager so you can play songs (again, illegal to ship directly with Ubuntu). Yeah, KDE 3.5 is pretty damn good. I much prefer it to Gnome. Once KDE 4.3 comes out I'll switch to that, though (as the bugs will be gone - KDE 4.0 was horrible). That's odd. It'll probably be fixed by 9.04 (really worth getting, comes out April 20th-ish). Actually I recall having a similar problem. Ask about it on the Ubuntu forums and they'll tell you how to fix it (they're really friendly). You can also use Wubi (load Ubuntu from within Windows), or you can run Ubuntu as a Windows application: http://lifehacker.com/5195999/portable-ubu...-inside-windows But yeah if there's one thing you should do, it's check out the package manager. So much amazing **** there. Oh, and remember to get the Flash plugin for Firefox, and then get Flashblock to round things off.

That looks pretty cool. I hope it's not just a GTA clone, though. I'm not really a fan of mindless violence and evil and such.

PS3: Alpha Protocol Assassin's Creed AvP3 Aliens: Colonial Marines UT3 etc, etc Wii: Mario Kart Super Smash Bros Brawl Possibly Mario Party (apparently it's good with mates when you're drunk) PS2: ??? Profit! Even given the PS3 game line-up above I'm tempted to choose the Wii because the PS3's games all come out on PC, while the Wii is social. Then again if I get a Wii, it'll postpone getting a new PC which means I'm sort of back to square one.

That's a cop-out. Avoiding the problem won't help. No, but alcohol will! Aside: I just got my $1,000 stimulus payment from Centrelink. Woohoo! Time to buy a new computer and a Wii,

Well, IBM in my home town (which is also where I'm at uni right now) is struggling to fill IT vacancies, and I just got a $14,000 internship with them for this year during my studies, so I'm going to offer a "no".

As tempting as the offer is, our dollar won't hit parity with the USD again until the start of 2010, so it's actually not as big a rip off as it seems. Even so I'm not sure will see any further drop below $200 since PS2's sell too well here. Australians pay about $140 USD, the Brits pay about $150 USD, the Eurozone pays about $135 USD for a PS2, and if you're correct, you Canadians pay $80 USD. Bah!

What good party/multiplayer games are there for the PS2? What good action/shooter/RPG games are there for the Wii? Also the PS2, since I never paid attention? Wii is $400 + 3*$70 for a total of 4 controllers, then about $100 for Super Smash Bros Brawl, $100 for Mario Kart + Wheel, 3*$20 for a total of 4 wheels. That's um 400+210+200+60=870. Man. There goes my government stimulus package. Though I suppose it'd be pretty fun. And a PS3 would cost as much for the console plus just 2 games. On the other hand, the PS3 games are more like real games (e.g. Alpha Protocol, AvP3, UT3, etc) and it'd mean I wouldn't have to upgrade my comp. Sigh. For reference the PS2 is $200, that's why I'm contemplating it.

Wow. I wasn't expecting that from Iowa. Cool.

From my local perspective, I think Kevin Rudd's cash stimulus measures are excessive. There's no need to hand out money to people. It gives you a short-lived boost in GDP growth numbers for the quarter and not much else. What a waste of debt. Now I fully support the infrastructure stimulus portion of the rescue package because it both creates jobs and leaves us with something tangible to show for it when the crisis is over. Far better to let Australia ride out the storm and let the social safety nets of Medicare and Centrelink do their job to absorb unemployment and such till it's over than to saddle us with debt we could have avoided. I guess this puts loosely me in agreement with France and Germany on the this matter.

Are you trying to correct my grammar or ask me a question? It means it makes no sense to say Britain had a smartly regulated financial and banking sector when it is proving right now that it clearly did not. I'm not talking about more or less regulation, but appropriate regulation. Perhaps Britain certainly did have more regulation of its banking sector than most other countries, and I'm sure that gave the business folk and investors a false sense of security, but it doesn't mean it was effective regulation, and it certainly doesn't mean that you can't find a better regulatory framework!

Eh. If you want to see an example of a good financial regulations system, look at Australia's banking system or, so I hear, Canada's. Most of the financial regulations agreed to by Britain and America and cohorts at the recent G20 summit were implemented by both my left and right governments years ago (started late 1980's by Hawke/Keating and then continued by Howard). Enough tooting my own horn because I know that gets old, but certainly it's a bit of a stretch to say that one of the world's economies most down the drain right now had a sound banking system.

We were recently at a gathering of old-hand game developers (Feargus was on the panel) that was giving advice to upcoming college grads. One of the speakers (Steve Perry, if I recall correctly) said that when he is listening to a game pitch, he tells the person giving the pitch to not mention the game's story at all. All he wants to hear about are the unique mechanics and gameplay that the game will have. He says that many of the people who pitch games to him are so enamored of their storyline that they basically collapse at this point and can't explain why the game would be compelling at all outside of the plot. That's a poor summary, but it was an interesting point to make. More for retail games than mods, though, I suppose. Spot on.