TetsuoShima

Happy birthday GorunNova!! :D

yaaaay, happy 28th birthday QueenSpock. :D [me=TetsuoShima]runs away[/me]

I've been rewatching Voyager lately and found it more enjoying than I did before. It just depends in what light you're watching the show. I've found that if I pay less attention to 'credibility' and imagine the show being written for the enthousiast 12-year old, that the show becomes much more interesting in this 'new' light. Even Neelix becomes enjoyable. :cyclops:

Interesting observations, though (aside from the 'chemicals' involved) nothing especially innovative (to me at least), since I'd respond quite similarly to what they observed in their test subjects. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080608-exploring-the-neurochemistry-of-fairness.html

That's right, today the x86 basic instructionset turns 30. The first commercial processor using this instructionset was called 8086, it was the first 16-bit processor available by Intel. This meant it could address a whole MegaByte of memory. O_O This chip was built with the incredible amount of 29,000 transistors on the process node size of 3200nm. ^^ The chip got its power from a 5V-line and consumed a maximum of 2.5W of power when running at the original clockspeed of 5 MHz! Now, why is this chip so important? The legacy of this chip is so large, that programs written 30 years ago for this little chip, could still work on current day computers and chances are that 30 years from now those programs would still run ok on future computers. The instructionset on which the x86 instructionset is based wasn't "invented" by Intel btw, but by Computer Terminal Corporation, who invented a product called 8008. The 8086 was designed in only 2 years and IBM made a deal with Intel to use a cheaper type (8088, which only had an 8-bit external interface) for its "personal computer". The start of an "industry" that's currently responsible for the larger part of generated income in the computer industry. Unfortunately this 'legacy' also has some negative side-effects such as the fact that even though the x86 "standard" really is nothing more than a bunch of tightly knit together jumbles of instructions, the 30-year old coding legacy is so large, that no newcomer in this market even stands the slightest chance of making a dent in this bastion of obsoleteness, not even when they have the best "fresh" ideas you could imagine (in terms of introducing a new instructionset commercially). Anyway, happy 30th birthday legacy x86. ^^

www.kongregate.com ^^ lots of games, some multiplayer, some single, many of the games are great, even more are horrible

Well, the first black president or a war veteran president... My guess still is that the republicans will win. ^^ (as you can see, my view on general human integrity is pretty low, especially where politics are concerned)

weeeelll, you did offer yourself voluntarily. :cyclops: That's no surprise, considering the nature of the question. :p Anyway, I just got lucky I reached the end, so the credit for winning goes to Ulysses. :)

Eh? I was a wereworf? Why wasn't I informed of this sooner. I could have had such a blast eating all that meat. So, 2 revelations eh. I was a werewolf and Ulysses is family. Hehehe. I was joking about the not knowing of course. We probably won because of Ulysses' ultra lucky first kills. (he got msg4real on first try)

£500 O_O That's about 650 euros. You won't get anything special or guaranteed high quality for such a price. Looks to me like you're looking for a budget laptop. That means: - no gaming - no very good battery life - no high quality screen imo, the best you can do in this case is just buy the cheapest you can, whose looks you like and take extra warranty for the left-overs of your budget. Don't expect anything fancy. ^^ btw. I went to the Dell website and the cheapest Dell laptop I could find, that I'd consider buying, was 700 euros. Tho I'm certain you could find a similar model cheaper elsewhere, Dell had a free 1-to-3 year on-site warranty upgrade available which would make it competitive again.

I always find it funny how people dislike those early TNG episodes (not saying anybody here does), but the one in the screenshot was imo actually pretty good. Could be youth sentiment. :cyclops:

I've got a few opinions :cyclops: : 1. wireless is not a good idea for a media server, use Gbit ethernet instead. 2. if it's going to be a media server, you probably won't put it in the living room and you can use an ordinary decent tower model instead of those overpriced media center living room boxes. 3. if you plan on using it to store/record tv shows, use a raid-5 setup, a crashed hard disk won't erase all your stored shows (well it probably wouldn't anyway, but it would make it virtually inaccessible unless you're willing to pay some $1000 or so) 4. if you are going for a raid-5 setup, put in at least 5 hdd's and don't use an nVidia chipset. (1 small hdd or flash drive (not those super expensive ones) and 4 economical drives for the raid array, for ex. WD caviar GP) 5. put in 2 tuners 6. this sort of setup will cost you a lot of money, especially since you'd need another (tiny) computer at all places you want to make the video available (streaming over your Gbit network, you'd need to invest in a decent home network too of course) If you're planning on building just a simple media center PC near your TV, it'll be a lot cheaper, but it'll also give you a lot less options and you'll need to be satisfied with either a large expensive case (those media center case don't come cheap and if you want to install multiple hard disks, they won't come small either, for example: Antec Fusion which is still among the cheaper decent ones) or slow hard disk performance (if you take a smaller case, you won't be able to install multiple hard disks and even might have to make do with 2.5" HDD).

Have a good laugh guys, it's worth it. :cyclops: Fallout 3 screen mistaken for Al Qaeda image click the image for a full-screen detailed view

Enterprise-E, new movie, ... *does not compute - error* Wasn't the new movie supposed to be about a pre-60's TOS Enterprise with Kirk & Co as youngsters? I don't think that would have any new productivity reflection on the Picardo's adventures. *giggle* You'd think I'm drunk, but believe me, I'm not. :cyclops:

I don't mind, as long as I get to eat disease free food and don't get eaten myself. :grin: j/k

Yup, it's great fun. Not that many tracks and stuff if I recall tho (the free version).

Eh? C++ not advanced enough. O_O You can write every possible program you can think off in C++, it may not always be the prettiest or most efficient code for 'the problem' (compared to more specialised languages), but you can write everything. VB, well, given it only works on Wondiz and the recent .NET versions prefer .NET installed on top of that, it's less usefull. There are C++ compilers for just about every system out there too. If you really wanted to and you didn't care for OO code advantages, you could even go for C.

Hehehe, this topic has gone so much off-topic that I think we can safely ignore the original topic by now, especially since the original problem was very specific and was solved? :grin: Anyway, back on the 'new and improved' topic ( :D ), it seems there are even some people that are (without realising it when they started?) defending IE7 in a weird way. IE7, the fastest browser on the block: --- IE7 outperforms other XP and Leopard browsers in RIA tests GUIMark --- What's worse, it even looks legit. :o So far for browser tests... Seems they can't be trusted, since I've seen tests that say Opera is fastest, I've seen a bunch that say Savari is the speediest, I've also seen those that say FF is faster and now I've seen tests that say IE7 is the dragster... We'll probably just have to rely on our own subjective feeling of speed when we're using a browser, since a test that can definately determine the winner in an objective way, doesn't seem to exist...

It's a trivial idea, there's a clause in the patent law that says trivial patents are not valid. Not even when they're awarded, so what's the point awarding them at all. Your arguement is flawed in the sense that you say not all computers are the same, but that's because they use different instruction sets, for example, if you want a pc that runs windows, you can bet that Intel get's it's share of that, since every single company that wants to build an x86 processor has to aquire a licence from Intel (even though the original x86 patent has long since expired, there have been so many additions to it, that in essence, if you want to build a current working x86 processor, you'll need a licence from Intel). The same goes for ARM/Power/etc/.. except in those cases it's not Intel. What is happening here, in this specific patent case, is (in computer analogy, be it very much simplified), I take a processor and a chipset (both already existent) and I take a patent on the combination of the two... It's not quite the same but in the abstract, that's what this patent amounts to: The abstract of the patent: Link to patent case There is NOTHING new in this patent, the only thing that's new, is the combination. If you read the claims, you'll soon find that they are laughable, in terms of new. the Improved clause... maybe...(I'm not that much into most recent solar panel/touch sreen tech) A patent cannot be granted to an idea btw: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/doc/general/what.htm My point is, patents on simple combinations of already existent tech should never be granted. Or maybe I just find things trivial more rapidly compared to other people? I'm not sure what else to explain or how to expand, since in my view, most of your post has no bearing on mine and I don't understand how you arrive at your conclusions on my view. Maybe you're just misunderstanding me, but this is "as detailed as it gets". =D

bweek, I really don't like ms Jolene. She's not really that pretty, her acting is only so-so, she goes in the "Jeri Ryan" cathegory: let's take someone some nerds can 'fantasize' about (in other words, someone who can be made to look 'hot' given enough make-up), put them in 'nerdy' role (Borg/Vulcan/anything but human really) and let all the *censured*... Not my style....

What I mean is that this is not even close to being worth awarding a patent. Most of these patents that are awarded are in fact nothing more than the combination of technology that's already existent. Only yesterday I read that a company (the name is not important) was awarded a patent on a technology that reads global positioning information from 3 different networks (the american, the european and the russian) instead of the usual 1. Again a trivial patent. I really don't understand why such patents are even seriously considered, let alone actually granted...

Yes, I was a bit off-topic there wasn't I? :cyclops: (I did enjoy it btw ^^ )

I'm not too fond of the word 'patent' in cases such as these, which qualify imo as 'trivial'.

Unless it's 0. :p (there's still discussion on which specific particles may have mass and which don't, but somehow I think that's beyond the scope of what you intended :cyclops: ) [me=TetsuoShima]seems to be a smart**s today ^^[/me]

Is that US dollars? If so... O_O That is frakking expensive. In Europe (if you go to a large cinema complex with high quality screens and audio), it'll cost you 7-8 euros. But drinks and stuff are equally expensive.