Darkling

I'll be hitting 40 myself on Tax Day, in the meantime,,,

quote:Originally posted by Nomad: Now that's crazy, Darkling, Jag and me actually having similar positions ? It's another sign of The Reaping

quote:Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr: Yeah, the battles are far more spectacular than in our previous games, not only because of the vamped up graphics, but also because you're stuck in a lowly fighter that gets jolted (yeah, we've got that whole shaking the ship violently when hit) each time you take a direct hit. Its quite fun actually, especially if you use an XB360 controller which has vibration to go with the jolting of the ship. hehe, I remember YEARS ago, you said, "There isn't force feedback on my games and there never will be", or something to that effect. Never say never.

quote:Originally posted by rapilot: ... sites will need cookies and ActiveX whether you want it or not. Actually, because of the way that Vista treats Active X controls, it renders the ones not specifically written for Exporer 7, practically useless. Try running BellSouth's DSL Router Setup (an Active X control) on Vista, it doesn't work AT ALL. Since MS is basically forcing everyone to rewrite their Active X controls to run on Vista, many of them will choose to switch to Java instead, since Java will work on ANY machine, be it Mac, Linux, Unix, Win2K, WinXP, you name it. quote:Originally posted by rapilot: The way it will have to be made secure is not through content provider restrictions but through rules. Rules mean artificial intelligence analaysis of usage of insecure features. Windows Vista sounds like it is ahead in making web browsing secure in a way that does not restrict what content providers can do. I think they call this dynamic security.Artificial Intelligence? Sounds like a bunch of nothing? Firefox ALREADY ahead in making web browsing secure, the technology is already here and already implemented. Best of all, you can get it for free right now. quote:Originally posted by rapilot: Windows also seems to be ahead in driver technology. Manufactures can more easily make graphic cards for Windows than any other operating system. It is amazing that Windows can still work with graphic cards many years old and also work with dozens of new graphic cards without a game maker changing their code.Actually, this is the biggest area of WEAKNESS for Vista, a lot of the new features won't work unless you have a DirectX9 compatible card, while Linux machines are implementing features similar to the 3D desktop, without needing to upgrade. In addition, there are many more drivers available for a Linux System like Suse, then there are for Vista. quote:Originally posted by rapilot: A big technology Windows has that no one else can match is DirectX 10. Its Geometry shaders can create extremely fast, photographic shading without game makers having to revert to pixel shading. DirectX 10 might also be useful for 3d modeling for business use such as Computer Aided Design, and recreating or modelling an event or physical process for science.Are you on crack? Do you even know what you're talking about here? First of all SwiftShader, by Transgaming is the fastest shader out there, and guess what, it works with DirectX8 or 9 cards and up to 50X faster than DirectX9. In addition, they will shortly be adding calls for OpenGL very shortly, which will make it extremely easy for vendors to create games for both Linux & Windows at the same time. The only REAL advantage that DX10 supposedly gives you (and I say supposedly, because no one has actually implemented a game that uses it yet) is that it looks at your hardware, and gives you the MAX performance without you having to manually tweak things. As for DX10 being used for CAD and stuff like that, most CAD programs use Vector Graphics! Why would a Pixel based Graphics card do anything for a Vector based program? That doesn't even make sense. There's a reason why CAD cards cost over $1000.00, and that's because it's a very specialized application for a very specialized field. quote:Originally posted by rapilot: I think Microsoft knows that Windows Vista is too slow for today's machines. Its unnecessary features will become not much of a slow down on tomorrow's faster computers, just like what happened with Windows XP. It is a shame that they don't let you turn off features anymore, like in Windows 2000 Professional. Microsoft doesn't care if they don't sell very many copies of Windows Vista right now. They are betting it will sell well in the future.Yes, but unlike XP, that had featurers like "Compatibility Mode", better handling of Drivers, and a host of new features, what does Vista bring to the table. Tell me ONE feature that Vista has that makes it a reason to switch? My prediction is that the only people who will be buying Vista is people who are buying new computers. It's one of the reasons they have it for $200.00 in the stores. They want to make a Phsycological point, if you pass up Vista now, and go for XP, it will cost you BIG TIME to switch later. quote:Originally posted by rapilot: Windows Vista is probably only slower not because it is inferior, but because it won't let you turn off features. The memory allocation technology may be better as said in a previous post. Better memory allocation technology will make all the difference on future computers. You're basically contradicting yourself on this last statement. What good is "Great Memory Allocation" if you can't force the system to use a smaller footprint? I have several Linux Servers installed, where I don't load up the GUI at all, to keep the footprint extremely small. Can you do that in Vista, or any Windows machine past 3.11? No, you can't. The only thing Vista does for "Better Memory Allocation" is that it addresses more memory, since it's designed to be used on a 64 bit processor, which has more to do with the processor than the OS. Operating Systems like Solaris, HP-Unix, and even Linux on a 64 Bit machine have had this feature for YEARS. How is it that now that Vista has it, all of a sudden, this is the future?

quote:Originally posted by Nomad: ...The only place there where you can almost behave like in Europe is Israel, as long you don't stand near Orthodox jews who aren't much better than islamic fundamentalists mentality-wise... You MUST be joking, while the Orthodox Jews would have you jailed overnight for public nudity, (same goes for most areas of the US), the Islamic countries would have you STONED to death. Let's see a night in jail, or dead, hmmmm, doesn't really equate, 2 of these don't belong together.

quote:Originally posted by stingray: So with more and more devs jumping on the videogame console bandwagon, Windows is sure to die. That's not really a factor, gaming is already very well established in MS over Linux, but what is a factor is the fact that it's much easier to scale a Linux distro to run a dual processor, Quad Core sytem, (in effect an 8 parallel processor system) on Linux than it is to get the same to run on Windows. In other words, it's MUCH easier to scale. I remember back when Wing Commander came out, you needed around a 486-DX2-66Mhz system or better to run it, this was when most people still had the 386-25's or 33's. You also needed a whopping 8Mb of RAM, again most only had around 2 or 4. You HAD to have Dos 5 WITH a Memory Manager OR Dos 6, because DOS 4 wouldn't let you load the CD player AND have enough memory left for the game. Dr. DOS wouldn't work, so IBM was out. Everyone rushed out to upgrade their systems to be able to run this game. You know how many of my friends upgraded their OS, Motherboard, EVERYTHING, Bought a CD ROM, just to run this game! If some "Killer App" were to come out for Vista, it could EASILY be made to run on XP, so unless it was MS that actually came out with it, there's no reason to switch, because it would probably RUN BETTER on XP. However, if someone came out with some Killer App, that would only run on an 8 Parallel processor Linux System, there would probably be no easy way to port it to Vista, so where would that leave them? Also, such a system could be made to run NT compatible programs utilizing 2 of the 8 processors, so people wouldn't have to give up compatibility. If someone invested the resources, they could probably make something similar to the MAC, (Which utilizes a Unix/Linux Core), with some sort of proprietary Windows compatibility (Like Codeweavers) and make it all into a fairly easy to use system. Once someone comes out with something like that coupled with some Linux "Killer App" it woudd be all over for MS, but we're talking years away since apparently no one has it on the drawing board. When you think about it, this is what Apple did with the MAC. They threw away their OS, went to Unix, and built a compatibility Layer to run OS9 and previous. Wrapped it up in a beautiful interface and whala, OSX is born.

quote:Originally posted by Cmdr. WeeGee: WinXP's interface is atrocious. Its unoptimized, frustrating, and is tied to the kernel so simple tasks can still lag the entire system.Actually, Vista's interface isn't much different than XP's from my point of view, and no, they STILL didn't make it modular, like Unix, Mac & Linux, everything is still integrated tightly into the Kernel, except for the Browser, that's been separated "a little bit". Biggest problem I see with Vista is the lack of a REAL reason to purchase it. I've already resolved the security issues on my XP & 2000 installs, so what other reason do I have to upgrade?

quote:Originally posted by Cmdr. WeeGee: Honestly Vista is a step forward in my opinion. Outside of video games my experiences with the final release have been much better than the experiences I had with the earlier releases. For starters the memory management is a lot better inside the actual OS, and it just runs cleaner.Well, I've run side by side comparisons on things like opening Email, browsing websites and even simple things like inserting images into word docs, and XP wins EVERY time. The worst part is that I'm comparing a 3Ghz Vista machine with a Gig of RAM to an 2Ghz XP machine with 512Megs!!! Honestly, I haven't tried any games on it, but considering the fact that it's even more processor and memory intensive, I can only say that it will be slower as well. As for a cleaner design, did you take a look at the 'Network' dialog box on it? Full of clutter to the point that you don't know what you're doing. The only thing that's cleaner about Vista is the desktop, it doesn't automatically drop an Icon for everything anymore, but you have that same feature in XP, simply turn off the icons on the desktop. I'll probably do the same with Vista that I did with XP, wait until most of the machines sold have 4X the processing power and 4X the memory, then get it. This way I won't Notice a performance decline. These days the performance difference between XP and 2K is there, but not so noticeable anymore on todays faster machines, but I remember installing XP on a 400Mhz machine with 256Megs of RAM and man... WAS THAT THING SLOW. And this is the same problem today.

quote:Originally posted by Jaguar: Vista? BAH, forget about it, I like Win2k, and will put up with XP if I have to, but there is no way that I am going to put that hog on a machine, there is just NO way. OBTW the routers with the hardware firewalls, are based on Linux...LOL I have a Dual Monitor system on my desk with a NoMachine client on my Win2K system so I can run my Linux thin client on one screen, and Win2K on the other. This way if I need to cut and paste between the two, I can do so. I use XP, after hours, for games and other things that won't run on my Win2K machine, but I find it to be a lot slower, even though I'm running 2GB of RAM on my XP system and only 1GB on my Win2K machine. Funny thing is that my Linux system is the lowest end machine and it's the fastest, even though I'm running it in Thin Client Mode!!! I do, however, run Panda Anti-Virus on my systems both for AV and Spyware protection, plus I like the Parental Controls on it, to block my kids from MySpace, Porn sites and other malware. I brought in my clients machine with Vista on it, so I could convert back to XP for my client (they're taking that one home for the kids) and put it through the paces and MAN!!! is that thing slow. It has twice the processing speed and twice the memory of my Win2K machine and it's still half as fast!!!

I wonder what the media would do here in the US, if a Judge rejected a divorce, based on the Bible. "News of the ruling brought swift and sharp condemnation from politicians, legal experts and Muslim leaders in this country, many of whom said they were confounded that a German judge would put seventh-century Islamic religious teaching ahead of German law in deciding a case of domestic violence." Some of these guys are worse than the Terrorists, at least we know where they stand. I have a lot of friends who are Muslim and THEY think this is crazy, but it goes to show just how scared the people in Europe have become of the Extremist, I guess they don't want rioting like in France over there.

quote:Originally posted by stingray: I guess I was expecting more space battles and missions, not a courtroom drama. How many shows can they really do about space battles? quote:Originally posted by $iLk: This past episode seems like this: I always wondered where the phrase "Jumped the shark" came from! I had stopped watching Happy Days, LOOOONNNGGG before he jumped the shark. quote:Originally posted by $iLk: There is supposed to be a 2 hour direct to DVD movie about Pegasus from the beginning of the Cylon war until they meet Galactica. If this does well, they'll probably end up with a spinoff series, maybe one that focuses solely on the Cylons. Look what they did with the Stargate series, we have an additional show Stargate Atlantis, and since SG1 is ending, they're coming up with a third show to fill in for that one.

quote:Originally posted by Cmdr. WeeGee: Well, what about Solaris then? rrrrRRRRUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!

quote:Originally posted by stingray: ... It was fun while it was about the fate of humanity, but now it's just about the main characters... it's quite sad actually. ...I can't think of a SINGLE show, where it WASN'T about the main characters. That's what shows do, they bring you in with a grand story, then build that grand story around the main characters of the show, otherwise every script would read like an engineering manual. Star Trek Voyager tried to make a show about "technology" and people got lost in the mumbo jumbo. "Deanna, you'll need to recalibrate the tri-phasic torpedos to match the quantum matrix vortex frequency. I figured if we can get the coeffiecnt of pie in the easy bake oven, it will be more delicious." I mean towards the end of the paragraphs you were like, "MMMmmmmm, Pie" completely lost.

OK so I'll join the Insurgents, since they need the numbers

quote:Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr: ... Good choice there on Linux, though Ubuntu (which supports Samba) would probably have been better. Ubuntu is a nice distro, but the nice thing about Xandros Pro is that it's designed to interact with Windows environments from Active directory all the way to NTFS writing ability. It's specifically designed to work in a Mixed environment, and since we were going to implement everything in phases, it just worked out better. Any chance on a Linux version of UC? I hear Transgaming has a portability engine that makes it possible to port a game to both Mac & Linux. They also have a product called "Swift Shader" that allows you to develop a 3D game that can be used in almost any platform. [ 03-24-2007, 06:14 PM: Message edited by: Darkling ]

I'll download one and give it a shot. Just don't start crying because I spanked ya'll. hehe

quote:Originally posted by stingray: ... but the bottom line is, we are affecting the climate and we must do something about it. It doesn't really matter how much we are affecting it, we can't let the situation get out of control, ...I think you guys are missing the point, but Nomad is a bit closer: quote:Originally posted by Nomad: ... Then in the Priabonian age, CO2 levels suddenly raise to 300% their previous values. Guess what ? No monkeys are found in Eurasian Priabonian fossils....What I'm trying to say is this, we've seen from the Geological Record that the CO2 level has been much, much higher than now, we had NOTHING to do with ANYTHING we did, as for the Monkeys, geologist are saying that they were due mostly to Global COOLING, not Warming. In addition, when you consider the fact that for MOST of the past, CO2 levels have been much higher than they are today, what makes you think we can do anything to stop them from going "back to normal"? Let's say that you're right, Let's say that we're causing 50 or even a 100PPM increase in CO2 levels, what happens when the Earth kicks in another 500 or 1000 PPM? What do we do? Cap the Volcanoes? Stop sea life from dying? Kill all the cows? By the way, when scientist estimate that "We" are causing up to 100PPM increase in CO2, about 70% of that number is derived solely from our livestock, you know chickens, cows, sheep. Are we supposed to kill off all our food? So I guess we'll die from starvation, but not CO2 poisoning! About the ONLY realistic thing we can do is start building hundreds of desalinizations plants around the world, especially around the Sahara and Middle East and turn all the Deserts into Rain Forests and farms, because unless we plan on killing off all our livestock and all becoming vegans, it's just not going to happen. Our industrial processes simply don't produce THAT much CO2, if you cut out things like the CO2 that WE put out from breathing and the CO2 put out by animals, the CO2 levels put out by our industrial processes works out to some rediculously low amount like 5 or 10PPM! These guys all know this, so what are they advocating? We kill off everyone in Africa to stop them from putting out CO2?

The reason that code from one program affects another is, again, because of the way that Windows is designed. Let's say that the Linux OS is like the solar system. You have the Sun which is the Core operating system, and Earth is the video system, Mars is the File system, mercury is the Printer subsystem, Saturn is your Browser system. Each one is seperate and acts independently, if say the Browser stops functioning, you kill the process and start over again, or better yet, if you were using say Opera as your browser, you power up Firefox instead. If KDE starts acting up (your video system) you can kill it and either restart it at the command line, or start a Different GUI, like Gnome. You can do all this without having to reboot. Windows is a Giant, like Jupiter. Windows has EVERYTHING under ONE kernal. The File system, TCP/IP, the Video, the Browser, it's all under a single "entity" so to speak, so if ONE goes down, they can ALL go down. Something that might only affect your browser could freeze up your system and you have to reboot the whole thing. Linux, Mac, Unix, none of them do this, which is why they're more stable. While Vista does address some of the security concerns the level of BLOAT in this package is amazing. I went out to one of my clients homes to fix a Vista installation (BellSouth couldn't get it to work with their DSL) What's funny is the guy had a decent Dell computer,It was an AMD3200+ with a Gig of RAM, a built in 6150 Video Card (capable of 3D display) and a large and fast HD. If you can imagine XP running on 256Megs of RAM, with a 32MB standard video card, well that's what it felt like. Suuuuupppper Slowwwwwwww.

quote:Originally posted by Nomad: toxicologic LIMIT for safe human health lifetime exposure is fixed BELOW 426 ppm. On the current path, we will reach that limit in 2050. For short periods, a human can tolerate up to 5000 ppm. But 24 hours/day, 365 days/year, it's 426 ppm. Most of the papers that I've seen put this limit at 750PPM, even so, considering the fact that it's been as high as 7000 PPM in the atmosphere, and since mammals have been around as high as 2200PPM I think the upper limit is much higher than stated. Some of the things that are not being looked at is the fact that CO2 helps retain moisture and increases photosynthesis in plants, which also increases the sink that CO2 goes into. It's not all bad.

Personally I think we should mandate that all new homes be built with Solar Panels built in. Solar Tiles can be installed in an average home for around 20K, and provide about 80% of the electricity that the home needs, excess can be sold back to the utility and with the expense amortized into the loan, it would basically pay for itself in energy savings. In addition, I think every home should also be sold with a Wind Generator and the government should mandate better fuel economy from Cars & SUV's. The only reason I believe we should do this though is to end the Death Grip that the Middle Eastern Oil empires have on us here in the US. By doing this AND increasing Drilling right here in our own back yards, we can cut ties with the Middle East and let them destroy themselves over there with Rocks, since they won't have any money for weapons.

quote:Originally posted by Nomad: The conclusion is that during the period analysed, NEVER were the CO2 concentrations as high as now, and that the concentration rate is following an EXPONENTIAL curve. ... BBC: Deep ice tells long climate story http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5314592.stm Wikipedia: European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPICA Actually, the "Early Carboniferous Period" had CO2 levels of approximately 1500 ppm, which is what over 4X todays levels?? What's interesting is that during that time, the average global temperatures were actually about 22 degrees WARMER than today. The planet was a tropical Paradise! Later, when the planet significantly cooled, in the late Carboniferous, and Carbon levels ended up at about 350ppm, (about the same as today) there were MASSIVE extinctions, because of the cold temperatures that accompanied that period. Keep in mind that the Late Carboniferous to Early Permian is the ONLY times in our history that Carbon levels AND temperatures have been as low as they are today. So what's the conclusion? If Carbon levels are going up, and temperatures are going up, it means that the Earth is returning to it's "More Natural" state. I mean hell, if you go all the way back to the Cambrian period, Carbon back then was 18X what it is today! Where they driving SUV's back then?

Apparently British TV has decided to "Follow the Money" on the Global Warming trend and it's interesting what they found. The thing is pretty long, but some of the highlights from this found: [*]One of the Authors of the IPCC had to threaten a lawsuit to get his name off the "edited" report, because he didn't agree with it. [*]Several other authors have been intimidated with the threat of loss of funding if they also wanted their names removed from the report. [*]The Co-Founder of Greenpeace left the organization because of this and has actually recieved death threats for speaking out against Global Warming. [*]Several University Professors who have spoken out against the Global Warming hysteria have also been inundated with death threats. [*]The Poorest people, Mostly in Africa, are being made to depend on Solar & Wind Energy (The most expensive kinds of energy) so we can continue to use cheap Oil, Gas & Coal [*]The report also ignores the fact that there is MORE of a corelation to Sunspot activity and Global Warming than there is for CO2 [*]The Report also ignores the fact that while CO2 only comprises .04% of the Atmosphere, the vast majority of that (.03%) is natually occuring! [*]The report also ignores the fact that the Medieval Warming Period was MUCH HOTTER than what it is today, and there's no evidence that England or NY were underwater during that period. [*]The documentary found that there is SO MUCH cash flowing to things related to Global Warming, that people not only don't have an incentive to find "The Truth", but if they speak out against it, they're in danger of losing funding.

quote:Originally posted by Grayfox: quote:The original show wasn't exactly MacBeth. no, but now that im older, a new version wouldnt have that same magic the original did when i was a kid. it might be something my kid might enjoy, but remakes always change from when you were a kid. several examples: transformers (theres no dinobots for cripes sake!)and he-man. now that my boy is watching them i look at them and think, "you know, the original was much better"... the magic is gone for me Interesting to see some of the old posts on this, BSG turned out to be for adults only, no kiddie magic here, I for one like the series, sure there are times when it drags a bit, but what show keeps you on the edge of your seat for each and every episode? I don't know of any, not even 24 does that for me now. I mean, how many times can you have a Nuclear, Biological or other holocost happen in a 24Hr. period? One of the things I find very interesting about the Machines, is the fact that they worship ONE God, (Like us) and seem to care more about each other than the Humans care about themselves (what we strive for), so in a some ways we can actually see things from the Cylons point of view better than that of the Humans on the show.

quote:Originally posted by Cruis.In: you can train while account suspended ? hehe Yes, training happens in "Real Time" so, especially when you're new, and are training up skills, if it says it's going to take an hour or 4 hours or a day, that's what it takes. And it doesn't matter if you're online or off. At my level, stuff takes like 30 to 45 days to train up, some even longer, so sometimes, If I know my account is up for renewal, in a day or 2, I'll switch my skill training to something that takes 45 days, (like Gallente Battleship to level 5) and I'll allow the account to be suspended. I then have a program called "EveMon" that monitors my Characters training and lets me know when it finished, and I'll reactivate my account and start playing again. I guess I do this because in reality, I don't have time to play EVE, so even when my account is active, I can only log in maybe 4 or 5 times a month. This may change once they launch Revelations 2 midyear, since that expansion will allow you to jump in and get some "Fleet Action" with NPC's so all the traditional planning that goes along with regular ops with real people is not part of the equation. We'll see if that happens correctly.

quote:Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr: The only thing that I see hurting GameTap somewhat, is that unless they commission exclusive property, they will always only have already ran games because there is no way in hell publishers are going to put their first run titles on there and compete with themselves.Who knows, just like I have Basic Cable, and pay extra for Digital On Demand and the PVR, they might come up with something like "The EA Games Channel" that you have to pay an additional X amount per month, or even special deals like on demand "Video Game Rentals", or a one time payment (say an extra 9.99 to 19.99) for a first run title. Let's face it, when you go the Retail route, how much money is actually going to the developer anyways? D2D has taken this a long way, but a Service like GameTap has the ability to go much further to help smaller developers get their games out. I remember when Cable first came out, in Rhode Island, about 27 or 28 years ago, we had a dish to receive HBO, and for the longest time, HBO didn't want to get in with the Cable Company, but eventually, since they started signing up all the customers and all the other Movie channels like ShowTime and The Movie Channel, HBO finally capitulated and got on with the lineup. Of course, you still had to pay extra, but I remember it worked out to about half of what we were paying when we were getting it via the Dish, I figured that they assumed they would get so many more customers, they could afford to do it for less, which was exactly happened, in the end it was good for the Cable company and good for HBO.