Darkling

quote:Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr: I'll check with GameTap to see why there is no link to the game manuals. However, they are in the DOCS folders where the game is installed. I used to have GameTap and cancelled because of a lack of MP support, however, from what I remember, you can't actually "See" the Game installation folders, since they're kept hidden and encrypted (this way if you cancell the service you can no longer play them). What they usually do with most games, is offer links to the manuals, from within the service launch windows. So unless they make them available, the player never sees them.

quote:Originally posted by Jaguar: This is another reason that I homeschool. I wish I could homeschool, that's just not an option for me, I had them in private school before me and my first wife got divorced, but after the divorce, I couldn't afford it anymore, and now that I could, the kids don't want to go back (friends and all that) and their mother sides with them on that issue.

My 15 Year old son called me from school the day before yesterday, apparently they put him in "Remedial Language Arts" because they showed on his record that he had failed the FCATs. When he explained to the teacher that they made a mistake, he looked up his record on the computer, realized he was supposed to be in advanced placement, he then told him it would take 2 weeks for them to transfer him. That's when he decided to call me because he says he couldn't take 2 weeks of that class. I went to the school and had him changed over immediately. I met with his new teacher to ask what the curriculum is like, and he assured me that they would be doing everything possible to prepare the students for college. He also gave me an outline of the material they would be going over for the entire sememster. When my son got home from school, he told me that the teacher at the remedial class, immediately started making fun of all the students there, his first words were "So is everyone here ready to flip burgers for the rest of their lives?" Then went on to say demoralizing things like, "Even though you kids won't be going to college, and probably won't graduate, you're still stuck here - at least until you're 16 and can choose to leave". It seems to me that life is about expectations, it's no wonder that these kids that end up in remedial education never get caught up, they're expected to fail and no one even makes an attempt to rectify the situation. This is the reason why we need to privatise the school system, these teachers have ABSOLUTLY NO incentive to help these kids out and move them to the next level. My son tells me that in 1 day of being in the AP Class, he's gone over more material than the first 4 days in the remedial class.

Part of the problem is that the early investigators NEVER tried to put any recources into actually following up on leads OUTSIDE the Ramsey Family. They firmly believed that the parents did it, so THAT was thier focus and nothing else.

quote:Originally posted by Case: Darkling (and anyone else who wants it), I just put a copy of this file here: http://www.rowlinson.ca/wraith/files/UCAWA-Assets.xls Thanks!!! Wow!, I never realized that a Questnar Cruiser has just as many turrents as the Megaron & Firestorm. I'm going to have to check it out.

Lately, my customers have been expressing interest in Linux Servers AND desktops (before it was only servers) so I think with Vista not going anywhere FAST, we're going to see much more of this.

quote:Originally posted by Soback: ... It doesn't take a genious to figure out that Social security is redestribution of wealth. Redestribution of wealth is socialism/communism, which in turn is slavery by another name. Taking one persons labor, and giving part of the benefits of that labor to another, is slavery, and it's unconstitutional. To those who say that what's best for the society can come at the cost of individual. They are forgetting that society is made up of individuals, ... While I don't agree with Social Security in principal, I would agree with the system that Chile has put in place. The system they have BOTH puts retirement income in the hands of the individual, AND provides for a Minimum safetey net, in case the investments they make go south. Really, it's a phycological thing, more than likely, the government will NEVER need to step in because, let's face it, if you're saving a bare minimum of 12% of your income all your working life, you won't need any help from anyone. The Problem is, U.S. society will NEVER accept a system that doesn't provide some sort of safety net. People's memories of the Great Depression may have faded, but they're not completely gone. Arguments like yours basically fall on deaf ears in this country, because, even if the system IS a transfer of wealth from one group to another, no one is going to say, "hey, let's let all those old folks starve to death, it's unconstitutional". I mean come on! Do you REALLY expect anyone to buy that argument? This is the United States of America, unlike most of the world, we DO have a TRULY free market economy, where anything goes, fortunes are made and lost along with whole carreers and job descriptions. This has made us into the Richest and most powerfull country in the world. However, UNLIKE South America, Africa and some parts of Asia, we will not allow our citizens to live in squalor, nor starve to death. Of course, this invites some to take advantage of the system, or in the case of SS, to skew the system in favor of one group (retirees) over another group (the working populace), in essense to buy votes. However, as the Great Depression has shown us, we DO need safety nets, if for nothing else to serve as a safety valve to keep the economy from completely disintegrating because NO ONE has a any money to spend. I've said here before, that the conditions that led to the Great Depression no longer exist. We have a better understanding of how free trade affects us, how monetary policy affects us, and how other things such as Banking Policy affects us. Imagine if you will, what would have happened if the US Banking System were not insured and in 1986 the 500 Billion the government had to pay to bail out the system, instead was coming directly out of the pockets of individuals like you? It would have devastated the economy and there would have been huge runs on the banking system. Any time you enter into a debate, I think it's usefull to provide some sort of resolution to a problem. No one likes someone who presents a problem, but no resolution. If your resolution is to eliminate SS and to Jail the Congress, then you're not debating anything, now you're just ranting. It's kind of sad too, because I remember you used to be such a good debater.

quote:Originally posted by Wolferz: It's still a boring game. You might like it for the first month or so but, unless you plan to invest a couple of years in building your character, then you are wasting your time and money. Just my opinion. Your mileage may vary. Yes, it is a boring game, if you're playing solo, however if you find the right group to do group missions, or go hunting, it can be very fun and rewarding. When I first started out, I joined a group of other "Newbs" and we got together and planned attacks on much larger ships and much more experienced players and were successfull, primarily because we functioned as a group. If we would have tried doing anything close to that on our own, we would have gotten ourselves killed VERY fast. Besides, if you're right, why are their numbers going up, instead of down? It's not like they still advertise this game, or even sell it in stores anymore?

quote:Originally posted by Meneliki: What's the proper tecnique to even get CLOSE to the station to reach the blind spot? It starts firing LONG before I am in range, and I'm dead in seconds. Any suggestions?First of all, you have to remember to think in 3D, and you have to experiment to find the blind spots. Keep in mind that there are different stations with different weaknesses.

I see your "Temporary" System Profile has changed. All the advice that I gave you before, was based on your 700Mhz system with 256 Megs of RAM. Next time make sure your profile is up to date before posting anything, since you waste our time otherwise. On a 3Ghz system, you're going to see a huge jump in speed from 256 to 512 Megs of RAM, from 512 to 1GB, you'll see about a 15 to 20% Boost, and from 1GB to 2GB, you'll see about a 5 to 10% Boost. About the only time this makes a bit MORE of a difference, is with certain games like Battlefield 2, which are HUGE memory hogs. Same thing applies as before, where you should have 2 identical sticks for the Double Data Rate to work.

quote:Originally posted by Cruis.In: im thinking more and more about trying this game. about time, it's been out quite a while. Will let you know, so you can help me out Most MMOG's out there usually start off with a bang and slowly bleed to death as everyone leaves. Interestingly, EVE has got this backwards, when i first started playing, there was only about 3000 players online on average with a max of about 5000 players at one time. Even though these are VERY small numbers compared to games like WoW, keep in mind that EVE ONLY has ONE world, there's no sharding and stuff like WoW. At any rate, the memebership in EVE keeps going up, I'm not sure how many total subscriptions they have, I think it's gone from about 30K to about 100K or more, but now they're up to over 28,000 Concurrent Players, and keep in mind, this is all in a single shard and there's no instancing or any other tricks like that, so I think it's pretty impressive.

quote:Originally posted by Darkling: For $221.00, you cold get a Socket 939 Abit Board along with a AMD64 3000+ Processor and 512 Megs of RAM. This system would blow your current system away and that particular motherboard comes with a built in card that will blow your current card away as well. Basically you're only looking to spend $100.00 more with this setup.I just realized I made a mistake with this, it's actually closer to 175.00, so basically it would cost you approximately $55.00 more than buying a gig of SDRAM. Even if you have to get a new Power Supply, you're still only looking at no more than $70.00 More than a gig of SDRAM. If you really want to stick with a Gig of DDR400 RAM, it's only about $30.00 more than that, so in total for about 200.00 you can have a system, that would totally kick your old system's butt.

quote:Originally posted by cutterjohn: AM2: DDR2 w/the current AMD AM2 CPUs will only get you 2-5% more bandwidth at the expense of a slight increasein latency no matter what AM2 CPU you get. They appear to not have done a great job on the integrated DDR2 controller...Actually, because of the latency, in anything lower than 4200+ processor, DDR2-800 is actually SLOWER than DDR-400, you basically need a 4800+ Processor or better to make up for the deficient latency, and that's actually using the more expensive "Low Latency" versions of the DDR2-800 chips.

quote:Originally posted by Raziel: Is there any legitmate reason why I shouldn't install one Ram stick (1gb) instead of 2 (512mb each)? Most DDR motherboards require that both slots in a bank be filled in for optimal performance. As an example, if you're using DDR400 RAM, it basically operates at 400Mhz, however, if you only use one stick it will downgrade to operate at 200Mhz instead. However, upon inspection of your system profile, it looks like your system probably uses SDRAM, If I were you, I wouldn't spend the 120+ Dollars that it would take to upgrade a 700Mhz system, because it would be too slow to run anything other than BCM Freeware or BCM Gold. Especially with a GForce2 card. For $221.00, you cold get a Socket 939 Abit Board along with a AMD64 3000+ Processor and 512 Megs of RAM. This system would blow your current system away and that particular motherboard comes with a built in card that will blow your current card away as well. Basically you're only looking to spend $100.00 more with this setup. You could also go with an AM2 Socket Motherboard instead, but the only problem with that is that the new DDR2 Memory that it uses doesn't develope a speed advantage until you're using a 4800+ Processor instead. Some sort of design screw up with the AM2 socket, but it does have a better upgrade path than the 939. Both would give you about the same price, I think the AM2 socket motherboard might be slightly less. Also, for about $20.00 more, you could get the Motherboard with the built in 6150 card instead, which has a slightly faster processor, but you would probably be better off upgrading to a stand alone card later, so just stick with the cheaper one for now. The only other thing you would probably need with this is a new power supply, since your old one probably doesn't have enough power for the newer chips and boards, but you can pick up a 400 watt power supply from New Egg for like $10.00 or something like that, though you might want to call to make sure it's compatible with that particular board.

quote:Originally posted by Spindoktor: It seems to transition from space to the planet's surface way too fast. And the music doesn't fit. But interesting nonetheless. True, but the transition is completely seamless, and the terrain looks incredible.

I know that your games Render entire planets SC, but this is really cool.

quote:Originally posted by Meneliki: ... you cant skip right to the top upgrade. I've always just skipped right down to the top upgrade, at least when I've played in the FireStorm, you sure this is correct?

I'm wondering if there's any reprecussions for taking out unarmed enemy transports? Whenever I'm in a shuttle, and I see an enemy transport, I capture it and tow it to the nearest friendly starbase, but I'm wondering, is there any downside to shooting these things down, such as a demerit of some sort?

Just wondering if anyone still has this, I wiped the HD that I had it on, and just realized that it wasn't on my backup.

Well, my wife's a Pharmacist, so after 8 years of college, yeah, she pulls down some change. Me, I just got lucky with my businesses. By the way, I define luck as working 60 to 80Hrs a week until business starts paying off:) You guys might notice that many times I'll go months without posting anything here, those are usually the times that I'm putting in my hours.

We can't even name our enemies without "offending" someone. Let's face it, it's not like we have ONE group of Radical Islamists, where you can say, "Well, that one group is just misdirected, misguided, and interpreting Islam COMPLETELY differently than what is taught in the Koran, and by anyone else for that matter. The problem is we have Radical Islamist in EVERY Islamic country and practically every country where there's a large group of Islamist, so it leads me to believe that there is something FUNDAMENTALLY wrong with that religion. If someone critisizes Catholocism, or Buddism or any other religion that I can think of, you don't have their religious leaders calling for the death of that person, like what happened 10 years ago with Salmon Rushdi.

What makes me believe it is things like giving Palestinians the Gaza Strip. Why in the world would they think that appeasing these groups would help them in any way is beyond me. These Arab countries love these people so much? Take back the Gaza Strip, make it a Permanent part of Israel, and kick these people out. When the country of Israel was formed in 1947, These guys CHOSE not to live in peace, they wanted the destruction of Israel at ALL costs, in addition, the Oslo accords, primarily fell apart because the Palestinians would not renounce that their PRIMARY purpose was the destruction of Israel, again, they CHOSE not to live in peace. The time for half measures and cease fires is over. During both the Carter years and the Clinton years, after these terrorist attacked, cease fires were brokered and declared, but they only served to postpone the inevitable, it gave them time to rebuild, restock, resupply and get ready for a bigger fight each time. You won't see the terrorists ready for a cease fire, until they run out of Ammo, only then will they throw up the white flag. Israel should use this as an opportunity to destroy them once and for all. On a side note, one of the "Hero's" that these guys want back is a guy who led a small team into Israel, killed a security guard at an apartment complex and took a father and his 4 year old girl hostage. After holding them for several hours, they went and shot the guy right in front of his daughter to terrorize her, then they smashed her head with the butt of the rifle against a rock. If a US Solder did something like this, they would be court-marshalled and face the death penalty.

quote:Originally posted by Soback: Oh, and Darkling. Upon reading your description on how you got your mortgage payments down, and managing your finances, I came to realization that you are creating for yourself a situation for THE GREAT DEPRESSION. I understand the term "cash flow", however, this is no way of doing it. .... One size fits all? No. I have a situation where my wife had to stop working for a couple of years because of a medical issue with one of my kids, which basically means that our income has been reduced by 90K a year, so if it means doing this for a bit until she can get back to work after my son is in school, it's not a big deal, I can make up for it then. In the mean time, when I have good months, I send in an extra hundred bucks or so, to apply towards the principal, but at least I have the option of the lower payment, whereas before I didn't. BTW, my "Flexpay" options, include a 15 year payoff option, which is about the same as my old 30 mortgage was, so once my wife starts working again, I'll be using that option. If I were to sell my house, the profit on my house would be enough to buy a smaller house with about the same payment I have now (if I were to take out a regular mortgage instead of a Negative Am), but in the mean time, I'd have to pay higher taxes then what I'm paying now, plus I'd have to pay taxes on the profits from the house. It just opens up a HUGE can of worms that I don't want to get into. For now this is the best option for me.

Nice Business to be in, especially if you're not the one doing the fighting.

What corp are you guys in?