metadigital

I didn't think that the case modding had contributed to the error. At worst I thought carelessness had led to static electricity damaging a critical component, like RAM. Best start with the power cord connected and the machine off. Open the case, touch the power supply with your hand. (This provides and earth for the built-up static in your very conductive human body.) Then unplug the power cable, touch the (metal) case and proceed with caution. People underestimate scale and prevalence of this type of damage. It's always easy in hindsight.

Current Pentium technology is only better for computational tasks that are highly repetitive, like video encoding, because of their ridiculously long predictive pipelines (twenty-odd stages, as opposed to the Athlon teens). Their cooler Pentium M range (laptops, predominantly, but their is no reason not to use one in a desktop if you self-build). This years Intel CPUs will be a "better Pentium M", with dual-core coming out in a few months, too. The Athlon have definitely been the gamer's choice for the last few years. Make sure the motherboard has support for the newer PCI-Express GPU, rather than the old AGP technology. Newer motherboards have a PCI-E 16 (which is far more than any card can use, but should provide some future-proofing). If you are thinking about cross-fire (twin X1900XT) or SLI (twin 7800GTX) then make sure you have two PCI-E slots: the lowest bus speed with throttle the two cards, if they are not equal. Less (1GB) super-fast, high quality RAM is better than more (2GB) slow crap RAM. Even if you don't overclock it. RAID is pointless for a gaming PC. It certainly doesn't imporve performance, can only hinder it, speed-wise. Better to use it as sequential storage, keeping your save games / perishables clutter off your kick-arse fast initial harddrive. Also, Vista will allow for the use of flash RAM (that stuff in those little keychain storage devices): this stuff is much faster than harddrive I/O (slower than comventional RAM, of course) which makes it perfect for pre-caching things like game level data ... not sure how this will best be implemented, yet, as no-one has used this hardware like that yet and Apple have bought up about 99.8% of capacity of flash RAM for their iPod Nano production.

:'(

Asimov used to put his name of annual SF anthologies: all the ones I've read have some cracking stories in them. I read one from the nineties that actually had the only real utopia I've ever heard of! If you are busy and don't get time to read big novels, short stories are great. Philip K. Dιck wrote loads of short stories and I prefer them to his novels (just about all the films made from his work were from short stories). Clarke wrote loads of short stories, too, including Sentinel, which was the one that he used as a template for 2001: A Space Odyssey.

It isn't available from my local blockbusters. Nor from WH Smith.

Not sure about that ... isn't it International Law, just located in Iraq? It's some sort of International Law facsimile. (I doubt Saddam had any laws against crimes against humaity.)

How can a cop control a psychopath?

That was my friend's big issue/great recommendation item. I just thought it meandered far too long; al the background stuff I had guessed in the first film: it was totally superfluous in the second. And David Carradine should have had more fight scenes. No respect for the grasshopper!

International Law is flawed. Guilty people don't just get off, they never even face trial. Pol Pot, anyone? The system needs a total reworking. Milosovic wasn't the first and won't be the last (Saddam Hussein) to make a total mockery international "law".

Not to mention Doctor Who being a major. Jimmy, what point did you think it became an action flick, after the double execution scene? I just watched Kill Bill volumes 1 and then 2. The first film was a lot better than the second. I'm not a big fan of ultra-violence, and women being hit is not a pleasant site (and I understand that Tarantino just likes looking at pretty girls, and likes kung-fu, so he put them together), but Tarantino has shown that his best talent is his eclectic eye for old film. I liked the attention to bushido and the gravity of law and the structure of it in the film. I thought the second film was overly long and had an acute identity crisis. Also, try as hard as I might, Uma Thurman just isn't believable as a kung-fu expert.

no doubt, but the Doomsday scenario sounds neat.

Yep. My bad. :"> Here are two recent reviews, bare in mind that the X1900XTX is out, and the X1900XT can work in crossfire.

That does you no good if your video card keeps overheating and causing your PC to restart. You enjoy all that, though. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Actually I have a thinkpad with an ATi Mobility Fire GL, and I have never had an overheating problem. I tend to use the Omega drivers, too, but I've never had any major problems either with or without. In fact the only problems I've EVER had was with both KotORs ... and that was not permiting me to have the movies running in situ as I played (but I could play them en masse).

Yes. And No.

... The new scenario starts in October of 1945 as the Soviet and Western Allies first clash. Soviet attacks against the Western positions are countered by nuclear attacks launched from Turkish air bases. From here, the outcome is pretty much up to you. ... Sounds brilliant.

I don't know how many different ways to start cursing you ...

The North Vietnamese beat the US by enduring, while support back in the US for the war withered away. That's still a defeat. Most Vietnamese people I know find it bizarre and ridiculous that some in the US still claim they didn't lose in Viet Nam. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The only reason that North Vietnam wasn't turned into a car park was the direct result of President Johnson hobbling the US war effort. The mythology grew up to to fill in the gaps.

Robots (Robin Williams FTW) 28 Days Later not as bad as I expected: in fact a pretty decent post-apocalyptic vignette of man's inhumanity to man in a dog-eat-dog world.

Hee hee. I remember when my father rented my first computer (for a week, to see if I would use it) and I had to re-seat the disk controller card from slot five (who ever heard of a disk daughter card in slot five of an Apple ][?) Fortunately it didn't take more than a few minutes, then I spent almost all 196 hours playing Star Trek ...

GeForce doesn't have AA support for Shader Level 3.

TRS-80 Hi-res!

Multi-talented

Probably in this rough order, with the lower ranks subject to change and omission: Half-Life 2 - Episode 1 (formerly known as Aftermath), hopefully there will be another episode before the end of the year, too ... Neverwinter Nights 2 Bioshock Spore Splinter Cell: Double Agent Tomb Raider: Legend (still a sucker for a good franchise) Oblivion (after someome reliable tells me it is not the same as Morrowind) Duke Nukem Forever Alan Wake Hearts of Iron 2: Doomsday KotOR: TSL Gizka Restoration (kudos Grom) Dreamfall: The Longest Journey Final Fantasy XII (if it comes out for the PC) Dragon Age Fallout 3 Medieval 2:Total War Dark Messiah of Might & Magic Ancient Wars: Sparta Gothic III Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone Neverend Pathologic UberSoldier Has anyone played Galactic Civilizations II: The Dread Lords? E&OE.

http://games.slashdot.org/games/06/03/09/1421211.shtml http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,125008,00.asp

Thanks for nothing.