Alacard

Way to go Jaguar!!!

I do not mean to be a doomsayer, but this appears to be an unfounded rumor, at least for right now While looking around the Internet, I came across this site that seems to have some good information, though the colors are horrible. It is repeating how prohibitively expensive going anywhere in space, including the Moon, would be. I for one would not want anyone taking an untested spacecraft to a planet where we lost/destroyed/crashed a large portion of our unmanned probes. In 2001, I remember NASA asking Congress for more money than they had already appropriated, 4 billion more if memory serves me correctly. That is after the 25 billion dollars we had already spent on the International Space Station; and that being just our portion. One can only guess how much other countries have spent. With the United State's budget operating squarely in the red, it would not be an economically viable to renew our space program right now, no matter how much it needs it Our commitment in Iraq is costing us billions, and will cost us billions more Our commitment to the ISS is... err... Same as above Our war in terrorism is costing us billions as well, though in many smaller ways, to include this appropriations bill. For the next few years, it looks like we are going to have to settle with this. While not quite as cool as going to Mars, it would be nice to ÔÇ£diversifyÔÇØ the economies of a few countries in the who rely soley on oil exports and just happen to be some of the most repressive regimes on Earth, not to mention habitual human-rights violators. The only time we are going to see real activity in space will probably be commercially funded programs that will need to have an economically solid base. quote: Whether its a good thing or not (probably not) IMO its inevitable that military get their 'piece' of space in the future. For better or worse, the military has already been in space for a long time.

I wonder why they didn't mention this aspect of SP2 for WinXP? Seems pertinant to me. quote: "Now in current processors, any programs that go into the memory overflow can be executed," he [director of marketing at AMD] said. "With this, the system only allows read-only in the buffer. It will not execute." The malicious program is then disposed harmlessly when the PC is turned off, he [director of marketing at AMD] said. Source article can be found here. While SP2 doesn't seem like a big deal for consumbers, I bet most IT personnel are keeping up with it's development. Some guy somewhere is rebuilding his/her server right now, wishing that there was no such thing as a buffer overflow

quote: I agree that Clinton was personally immoral, lied to his country and should not be let off easily, but he is no more a traitor than Nixon or Bush is. Bush amd his administration mislead people into beliveing a direct link existed between Saddam and 9-11. This is a lie. I understand why he did it and beleve he did what he did not because he is EVIL , but because in his mind it was the right thing to do for his country. Nixon subverted the political system because he was so convinced that if he wasnt reelected the country would be at great risk under democratic control. I dont think he was evil either, just misguided. This demonizing of the opposition will destroy our country. We both do it and it is dangerous. Our Constitution has stood up to challenges before and will always do so if we all remember we are all AMERICANS! Clinton doesnt have 666 on his head and niether does Bush. Couldn't have said it better myself I didn't care for Clinton, don't care for Democrats, and I undestand that nobody really cares what I care for

Wow, talk about innovation. I take my hat off to ya Apex Digital, though it would appear their system will go the way of the Sega and Atari console It's been awhile, but wasn't this part of the reason for the XBox, ease at which games could be ported over?

Looks interesting, though travel times might need some work. Project Entropia seems to be implementing a novel way to pay for online gaming; you can purchase money ingame using real dollars, to the tune of 10 PED (Project Entropia Dollars) are equal to 1 USD (U.S. dollar) and the majority of transactions are taxed. Rather novel marketing idea, imho

!!! Happy New Year !!!

Better late than never. They should say Beagle 2 was lost because the BIOS is messed up. That'd get some attention

on the new forums!!!

Also, don't forget to disable your anti-virus software as well

quote: I hope I posted this in the correct place. The General Discussion forum just didn't seem right Thanks for moving it then, I was kinda tired when I posted it. Anyways, I was, more than anything, curious about the International perspective. I am familiar with the issues surrounding our space program. Sadly enough, you are very correct, they lack a mission and focus. I guess your right, but I still don't understand why this kind of thing has to happen in this day and age

I hope I posted this in the correct place. The General Discussion forum just didn't seem right All right, I was reading the news today and could not help but to think What is wrong with some of the governments around the world? Why dont their people rebel against them? Why dont they reorganize their governments in more efficient manners? Seriously, why did an insane number of people have to die in Iran in an earthquake ? Why doesnt Mr King-for-Life-Brutal-Dictator say to himself You know Chemical Ali, those infidels, while they lack the light of Allah/God/Jehovah/etc, do seem to understand policies and procedures, I mean, they seem to be able to build buildings that can take an earthquake with a reasonable expectation of surviving it. Their politicians seem to maintain their grip on power even with freedom of information, and they even manage to not be angrily struck down by the Almighty, even though they occasionally invade other countries. Could we learn something here? It sounds overly simplistic, but what is wrong with these people? The Unites States has made some major mistakes. Here is a list of some of our nuclear ones. We (the United States) also do random stupid stuff, like joyrides to classified depths in nuclear submarines with civilians at the controls and then ramming into fishing boats giving tours to students . As an American, I know we make mistakes, but it seems to me that we learn from them. Our Navy has issued an order (as if one needed to be issued...) that this is not to happen again. quote: According to the U.S. Navy officials, American submarine commanders are being ordered not to allow civilians at control stations. The normal response should be Implementing our policies and procedures would be prohibitively expensive in countries with fragile/developing economies but if you look at our Inspector General and General Accounting Office , they save money as they eliminate fraud, waste and abuse. They save more money than they cost while providing a valuable service. These two agencies do a wonderful job doing their job, and that is overseeing the alphabet soup of our other government agencies, making sure that they too are doing their job. Their job being building our buildings to code, designing our freeways so that we don't run into eachother, running our hospitals, defending our country, etc. So, my question is, why cant other, non-European countries do this? (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, etc seem to understand the oversight committee thing as well) I can understand Africa, where the major problem is feeding people and curbing the spread of pathogens, but in the Middle East, what is wrong over there? And Russia? Why did they lose yet another nuclear submarine. ? I can understand losing one (as dispassionate as that sounds, losing ships is an inevitable consequence of having a Navy) but a second? Worse still, it sank while it was being towed. I understand that we (the United States) have lost more than one submarine. While we were figuring out how they worked, we lost quite a few, unfortunately. But I do not remember the last one we lost. It seems that its been quite awhile. Are the Russians really that far behind us technologically? Are their procedures and policies really that antiquated? Then there's the botched hosage rescue. While I doubt the United States would have handled much better without international assistance, I would imagine that our anti-terrorism (or SWAT) teams on site would be on the phone with their counterparts in countries that do have experience dealing with this type of crime, namely Britain, Israel, Greece and Peru, all countries that have years of experience of dealing with domestic terrorism. With the exception of Peru, I doubt any of the other countries would have gassed their own people then not told the doctors what they had been gassed with, as the Russians did. While I am not a powerful leader of an oppressed society, I would hope I would think Hrmmm, a country similar to mine has been invaded and conquered in about 3 weeks, now the conquerors are irked at me, maybe it's time to try a different approach? My sincere condolences go out to all those affected by the horrible tradgedy in Iran. I welcome any feedback anyone might provide.

quote: Gothic 2 - For me this is old, old news... but since it only had its formal US debut last month, it's worth noting here. G2 is, quite simply, one of the best CRPGs out there, period. IMO, it joins the likes of Fallout, Daggerfall, Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment, Ultima Underworld, Bard's Tale, and Wizardry 8. Yeah, it's really that good. Of course you'll be happier if you've played the first one but you can start with 2 without being lost (You start from square 1 anyway). The controls take some getting used to at first, but ultimately turn out to be superbly designed. 10/10 That's really good news to me, since I'm a fan of the origional. I seem to remember support being tough to get though, since I think it's a German game. If your interested, go here .

quote: So what was happening? I work for an engineering company, and although I don't know much about the finer points of mechanical engineering my theory is that the vibrations of the fan travel through the motherboard, and that RAM stick was at just the right location such that the frequency of vibration set off a harmonic reaction in the RAM stick causing it to vibrate in sync, amplifying the fan's vibrational frequency. Just like a tuning fork vibrating in reaction to a note being played. Moving the card changed the distance to the CPU fan, and/or moved it to a region of the board that may have been vibrating with a lesser amplitude or different frequency, thus dampening the noise. I'm going to talk to one of our real engineers tomorrow and see how involved creating a model for analysis of this would be. It'd have to be simplified, but I figure a vibrating block attached to a thin plate with another plate jutting out should be sufficient. Of course, to be really accurate I'd need to know the exact dimensions of the mobo, the exact positions of the screw holes, etc. I just may create an arbitrary mock-up and experiment some. In the military, we start out by making sure the 2 cent plastic hinges used to mount the RAM aren't bent... Save the wind tunnel and supercomputers for other stuff Sorry, it was just too good to pass up

Aye, Merry Christmas and happy New Year!!!

quote: http://www.3000ad.com/_denied/access_denied.html On the one hand, putting profanity on your company website is not a good thing, but on the other hand...*dies from laughter* omg, that's great!

All right... First and foremost, I think what El Che was attempting to imply was that while the United States does not supply ANY country save our closest allies (Britain) with NBC weapons, we might have kinda sorta maybe could-have-in-a-round-about-way have somewhat trained their scientists sorta What I mean is that a few of their scientists were indeed trained in the United States. For example: Khalid Ibrahim Sa'id and... Barnes and Noble has a wonderful "conspiracy-theory" book, "Saddam's Bombmaker" regarding this issue regarding another scientist. In addition, there are those people in the world who believe what their brothers ex girlfriends mothers sister said. Evidently, there are also those people who, if they spill food on their morning paper, make no attempt to remove it and instead just continue to read on, ignoring key words that happen to be obstructed by food. Words like not didnt and has not These words, called negatives because they negate previous statements, are very important and should not be ignored. I believe the article referring to our sale of NBC related materials can be traced to someone committing the previous paragraphs errors when reading it. The information in question can be found here. Please bear in mind the points mentioned in the previous paragraph and note that a lack of information does not justify filling in the gaps with pure speculation. This article states that Don Rumsfeld went to Iraq. While he was there, he did not admonish the Iraqi government for using NBC weapons. Now, that is quite strange indeed. Why didnt the man who was a private citizen at the time berate the leader of a brutal military dictatorship regarding his alleged use of NBC weapons against Iran? Come to think of it, who paid attention to the Middle East while the Evil Empire was still around? We were much more interested in curbing the spread of radical Islam than curbing the spread of low-tech weaponry. This is not a chicken-or-the-egg thing. Radical Islam is a major player in the proliferation of black market weapon sales. Get rid of the crazies and you don't have to worry about them blowing you up. Some elements of the United States government might have had a friendly relationship with Iraq pre-1991 due to the increasingly intertwined nature of business and international relations. In addition, officials in defense-related industries would have not had to inform the State Department of their activities in dealing with Iraq since Iraq was removed from the list of countries that are state sponsors of terrorism in 1982. It was a very different time than it is today. Do not forget the chronology of these events. Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988 Operation Desert Storm, 16 Jan 1991 Fall of the Soviet Union, 25 Dec 1991 From the list of dates above, it is obvious that Iraq was not our primary concern and indeed, it should not have been. With the Soviet Union teetering on the verge of collapse, 1990-1992 were a very dangerous time as demonstrated by the failed coup attempt . I will mention that we have indeed sold some military hardware and supplied the technical expertise to operate and maintain it. Here is the official information regarding Iraqs demographic, economic, and military status, circa 1987 from the Library of Congress. Note the M-60 among others. We made those weapon systems. We provided technical support to maintain their operational status, and we are the ones who, in the end, blew them up with relative ease. Kind of ironic. Just goes to show ummm hrmmm we need better armor on our stuff, especially on the top If you insist on being critical of how our system of government works, please refer to the General Accounting Office and Inspector General websites. The offer wonderful, substantiated claims of fraud, waste, abuse of power, etc, which would include the illegal sale of classified military hardware (NBC) to countries that are recent tenants on the State Sponsors of Terrorism listing. Wow, that was allot longer than I expected If you got to the bottom to read this, congratulations

So.... should those of us that have pre-ordered cancel it? You probably can't answer that question... I appreciate your honesty and candor. Is it just me or does it seem that DC want's SC to fail for some strange reason? Just a thought...

So.... should those of us that have pre-ordered cancel it? You probably can't answer that question... I appreciate your honesty and candor. Is it just me or does it seem that DC want's SC to fail for some strange reason? Just a thought...

I'm kinda tired but.... Does this mean if we pre-ordered we're SOL?

I'm kinda tired but.... Does this mean if we pre-ordered we're SOL?

quote: As for the meeting and such, it was a no go they wern't able to keep there promise but I did get wind that the 'no-grad' thing was kicked out of the school. No idea what caused them to change there mind Well congratulations

I should have asked this question earlier... Has anyone actually sat down with the faculty and discussed this problem, or was it some kind of mass briefing? I'm asking this because it is quite common for educators to forget that they are 'for-profit' organizations providing a service to clients (that's you). Since they are either a private company, a county college, or a state institution, they are able to do whatever they wish. Bad idea follows: The only thing you 'might' have on them in terms of legal defence is a breach of contract. I would not pursue this road as it could lead to lengthy and expensive litigation. Good idea follows: As LostInSpace said, your best bet is to do your research regarding this practice at your particular school. Look up your particular institution's rules and regulations (they have entire rooms full, I promise ) Also, do the smart thing, get together with your classmates/friends and brainstorm up a way to deal with these guys who are directly threatening your future. At the very least, you will have lost money and and 2-5 hours, that's worth sticking up for.

Your not going to like this but the point of this method of discipline is for you to confront the individuals who are jeopardizing your future. If the school is a private organization, they are free to do pretty much anything they please, however, if the goal was for everyone to be denied graduation they would not have offered you the opportunity to rectify this situation, they would simply fail you all. Personally, I couldnt think of a better place to teach problem resolution (which is what this is) than in a career class. Note: While I am not familiar with the particulars of your situation, it would seem that the staff is indeed on your side, even if they are somewhat lazy in enforcing fair treatment (another wonderful thing to teach about in career class, life being fair all the time) If they are alienated from the class, negative results will most likely result. quote: When I was in the Navy this would have warranted a "blanket" party. Thats why the Navy and the Air Force get along and allot of jokes about the Army dont hurt either If anyone is unfamiliar with blanket parties, go here. Anyways, I hope I didnt make you mad. My intent was to offer my perspective on what I hope would be my course of action, get the two students in line or get them out.

The following is my personal opinion; what I have noted from personal experience and those I have discussed this issue with. I've been noting this phenomenon for quite some time now. New platforms are released about every five years NES 1986 SNES 1991 PS1 1995 PS2 2000 PS3 2005-2006(?) Given that most players buy either a console or a PC in a year, not both (unless they are rich), only one can truly be dominant at any given time. Also, due to dramatic price drops along with a myriad of titles available on a known-good hardware platform at a reasonable price, the industry reaches a level of market saturation somewhere around a year after a new console is released that lasts about 3 years. (Ex: Think of 10+ of your all-time favorite PC games, chances are most of them shipped within a year of a console being released.) Notice the prices on new PC software? How about console software? Console software seems downright cheap by comparison. This is simply a normal price fluctuation on elastic goods. Consumers have a set spending limit (whether self-imposed or not and therefore cannot afford keeping both systems current (mid 20s single males, this does not apply to us We are currently at the apex for the console side of this cycle, give computer games two or three years to will pick up again as the full ability of the PS2 is realized and the market becomes totally saturated with mediocre titles that should not have been released (Tribes 2 for console two years after it's cold reception into the PC world anyone?) At that time, we should see a substantial drop in the prices of both PC games and console games (as they scramble to retake lost market-share) Personally myself, I am glad the cycle works something like this. I could only imagine how expensive it would be to maintain a top-of-the-line gaming system all the time? Yikes!!! I will look into this further, but hopefully someone will read this and be able to provide a link into actual scientific research or marketing studies to validate the points I have presented Anyways, thatÔÇÖs my .02$