metadigital

Damn, I already bought Chaos Theory! *shakes fist at Ubisoft*

Kaftan FTW!

Oxysavant? :cool:

Meaning that the Germans weren't operationally ignorant ... okay, try this: how can Blitzkrieg work without operational acumen? Co-ordinating all forms of assault into one ruthlessly efficient man

Ask not what TOMBS can do for you, but what you can do for TOMBS ... :D

I like to reward the shareware system by purchasing software (that I like) that is released for free trial.

I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you saying that staggered purchasing of hardware is a better strategy? Possibly. But nevertheless, all costs are falling, year-on-year.

It looked bad.

Um, no, I think that is an exaggeration. I have a 30 month old laptop that can play all the latest games.

some geek has managed to turn his mouse into a hand scanner. :D

You should see the mouse!

Well, I would argue that is a little pessimistic; if one bought a pair of ATi X1900XT in crossfire / nVidia 7800GTX in SLI with a supported PCI-E motherboard and some good Corsair RAM, a decent screen (even a CRT if size is not a factor) and you won't be excluded from any game in the next five years. For sure.

This is too true. I think the problem is like asking "What do you like to eat?" or some other open, broad-spectrum question. I, for one, keep thinking of so many other books that I have forgotten I've read ..!

I was emphasizing the fact that preservation of human life was relative; i.e. US > rest-of-the-world, for the US.

I'm reading a book by an expert on the development of torture techniques who asserts that the Abu Ghraib photos do not just show examples of wild late night antics by a few out of control guards but rather show good examples of the implementation of CIA torture techniques using sensory deprivation, self inflicted injury, and ego assualt - techniques which start right at the moment of capture when captives are hooded, blindfolded, and earmuffed, and then forced to assume high stress positions. ... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Sounds just boarding school sixth form detention ... :D

Fixed.

Thanks for the link, Numbers! PS Glad you're back (it was rude of me not to say so earlier, I know).

I knew I knew that name from somewhere! Yes they can be fun to read in a "get me to work without noticing the smelly guy next to me" kind of way: a bit too frothy for my liking, but certainly worth a skim. Has anyone mentioned Ray Bradbury? Obviously anything HG Wells ever even sneezed at. Flatland: A romance of many dimensions. The Creature from the Black Lagoon is a good read (the film is only good for shlock value). This link has some good ones: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/brows...0374817-2016106 Outer Limits and Twilight Zone (old and new series), X Files etc were all SF. John Carpenter's The Thing (not sure what the book is like) The Day the Earth Stood Still The Forbidden Planet The Fly and sequel (I prefer the remakes, but the originals have Vincent Price!) The Planet of the Apes (the original 1970s series of films, not the Tim Burton crap) Clockwork Orange This Island Earth (even better when seen as part of Mystery Science Theatre 3000) Barberella is a must see ...

There are a number of RAID configurations: they are meant to provide robust data integrity, not speed of access. (RAID 0 is only RAID in the pedantic sense similar to zero being a quanitity.) Check out the linkie for a full explanation, if you dare ... :D The only really useful RAID is RAID level 5. This is what businesses use for data that must not be compromised: it allows for a drive in the array to be lost, swapped out with a new, unformatted one, and the array survive and rebuild across the span including the new disk. (This is called "hot-swapping" and keeps the data secure whilst the maintenance is performed; I have actually done this.)

Just watched Liz Taylor and Montgomery Clift in Dreiser's A Place in the Sun. Excellent old film (won a bag oscars back in 1951).

Occupational hazards. caveat: Kaftan just pointed out to me that RAID 0 is in fact a good way to bring down average seek times for hard disk arrays (by the inverse of proportional capacity). Of course, RAID 0 isn't strictly RAID (the "R" in RAID stands for "Redundant", and RAID 0 is striping across all the available disks, so it provides no redundancy if a problem occurs). So setting up multiple disks in a striped array (RAID 0, sic passim) will increase performance, but don't think you are also ensuring against catastrophy.

Loquacious eloquence admixed with tolerant discussion FTW.

I always thought that if a prmie material plane dweller died (on their alignment plane) after death then they just ceased to be. Nihilistically bereft of purpose, meaning and anima / animus.

Wait for the next card release, then the older ones will be cheaper. No point in buying just yet. There are some bargains to be had, like the 6800GS, especially if you buy two in SLI (assuming you don't have an AGP motherboard, which IIRC you do). the newer cards will have more unified shading units, which should suit later games (like F.E.A.R. and games yet to be released), so buying a current card will just be a stop-gap ... after all the 6800 has been out for yonks.

Loads. And there is a new nVidia due out in the next month or so, too.