Sertorius

I've been considering building my sister a PC over my winter break. Tell me what you think of this setup: Case: Cooler Master HAF 932 PSU: Corsair 550W ATX12V V2.2 Mobo: EVGA LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 750i ATX CPU: Intel E8600 Wolfdale 3.33GHz (L2: 6GB) GPU: EVGA GeForce 9800 GTX+ RAM: Corsair Dominator 2x2GB (4GB Total) HD: Seagate Barracuda 250GB 7200RPM OS: Vista Ultimate 32-bit System Builder's Edition A couple of starting questions: 1. Regarding the CPU, should I go with the dual-Core E8600 or a similarly priced quad-core? For the exact same price, I can get a Q9400 (2.66GHz, 95W, (L2: 6GB)), or for $50 more I can get a Q9550 (2.83GHz, 95W, (L2: 12GB)). Considering that this PC will be used for running one game at a time, with no major programs in the background, would moving to quad-core decrease or increase performance (On Tom's Hardware, the E8600 is pretty high on the hierarchy)? Second, if I moved to quad-core, would this necessitate purchasing a better fan/heatsink and a bigger PSU (Probably too much money)? 2. Should I go with Vista or XP? 3. Is the PSU sufficient? 4. Use this GPU or an equivalently priced Radeon?

I've got it running on my system (Athlon 64 X2 4400+, 2GB RAM, GeForce 7900GT) and it performs acceptably. You just have to fiddle with the drivers for your graphics card, and it's not that difficult to do so. Fun, and that city is huge.

Should I remove the Display Drivers too? Or should I only remove the Display Driver? Edit - NM, I found a walkthrough Edit2 - IT'S ALIVE! IT'S ALIVE! IT'S AAAALLLIIIIIIIIIIIIVVVVEEEEEEE!!!!

A. They're both slower  ? How can you tell (This n00b needeth thy knowledge)? OK, what about these (Just a few more ideas): MSI N9800GT 512OC GeForce 9800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 HIS Hightech H260XTP512DDN-R Radeon HD 2600XT 512MB 128-bit GDDR3 Both of these are GDDR3, and I think my 7900GT/GTO is GDDR2 (I bought whatever the cheapest one was). No matter what I do, my new card will be DX10 compatible as compared to the old one, and that should provide some improvements, right? P.S. - Do you have a personal preference for something I haven't mentioned yet? What's the best card I could put into a PCI-Express 16x slot?

HELP! I just got GTAIV, and I see that it has become necessary to update from the old graphics card (Game is totally unplayable). Current card is a Geforce 7900GT/GTO in a PCI Express x16 slot. I don't want to do anything fancy, I just want to replace the card. I was wondering what I should replace it with. I have some ideas, and some comments on them would be much appreciated. Galaxy 86GGE8HDFEXX GeForce 8600 GT 1GB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Galaxy 95TGE8HUFEXX GeForce 9500 GT 1GB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Both seem reasonably cheap. Should I go with one of these, or a 512MB card?

Yes, but when the government sponsors monuments to one particular deity, it looks like a state-endorsement of said deity. Yes, but the Supreme Court also has friezes commemorating characters like Hammurabi, Mohammed, Confucius, and Octavian. Hence it's not a state endorsement of one religion so much as a monument to the various sources from which we've created our body of law.

IMO, the question is who is the last president Americans elected that was not a populist in some way or form. When it came to issues like abortion, gay marriage, and shooting holes in Arabs, Dubya certainly qualified as using populist politics. Clinton had lots of giveaway programs, Bush I led a hugely popular and successful war, Reagan was hugely populist at times, and so on... This might be partially responsible for the 10+ TRILLION dollar debt owed by the US.Edit: While on the subject of what kind of debts can be accrued with the populist approach to spending (Demand services along with tax cuts), check this Government Accounting Office report out. As the Baby Boomers age and old people become a larger and larger segment of the population, watch "The Third Rail of American Politics" and other massive entitlement programs send debt levels into the stratosphere. And I guarantee you, if Obama rams some form of Universal Healthcare into action, it will not be fully funded. To do so violates the basic illusion of American democracy: You can get more out of the government than you put in through taxes! The document is flexible in the sense that one can add or modify segments. However, one is supposed to acquire a large popular majority in order to do so. The government is not supposed to blithely ignore segments that it doesn't agree with. Giving the government permission to do so, even if you agree with the goals that are being pursued, pretty much destroys the entire concept of the Constitution as a check on government excess.

Basically, I expect that BI knows to make a variety of weapons from within the US and Russian arsenals. What I'd like are some guns more appropriate to a Resistance faction: -G3 -FN FAL -SKS -AR-15 -Remington 700 (Or any other scoped hunting rifle) -A hunting shotgun

Considering that AA is essentially an Army recruitment tool, I don't think they'd want to show impressionable teenagers a close approximation of a gutshot . Yeah, it looks exactly like Pipeline. It looks much better than the current version. Even if this is mainly a graphical update, I'll always bite for free stuff.

If only that were true . Some Republicans seem very lukewarm in their free-market beliefs, and as for civil rights... They do protect them, unless you're gay, need an abortion, or are fond of making phone calls without Langley listening in (And some are very shaky on gun rights, freedom of speech, you name it). Republicans are going to spend the next two years (At absolute minimum) reaping what Dubya sowed for the last eight years. Republicans fought for huge growth in the power of the "unitary executive", and now they're going to see what happens when the other guy gets his hands on the power structure they built.

"Yes! Yesss! Oh, let me taste your tears, Republicans! Mmm, your tears are so yummy and sweet! Oh, the tears of unfathomable sadness! Mmm-yummy!" Â Now I can eagerly look forward to watching people become disillusioned as Obama's Messiah luster fades. Hooray for a pessimistic libertarian outlook on politics .

Anyone else watching the returns? Electoral-vote.com has called Pennsylvania and Ohio for Obama. Unless a meteor takes out New York and California, Obama should win.

FS2 is pretty old, but it has been heavily modded and looks much better than it used to. You should be able to find a link here, just make sure to install the SCP modification so that you can get the new graphics updates.

Yes. Don't buy it, it's a rip-off . Less gibs, no throwing knives, no plot, and some semi-pretty graphics.

All right, I bought it yesterday on a whim. The Good Parts: -Decent Weapon Variety -Lots of Customization (Including loads of sights) -Nice Graphics The Bad Parts: -Really short SP campaign -Less gibbing (You can blow heads off, but you can no longer blow holes through heads. You also can't saw people in half with your double SMGs) -Plot (Or complete lack thereof. Some evil guy with a vaguely Irish accent is doing, well, I don't really know what he was supposed to be doing) Worth about $10 of fun. I paid $40 . On the plus side, I picked up Rainbow Six Vegas for $19 and I'm now enjoying dangling upside down outside windows while blasting away with a Mark 23 .

And if you live off money from shares, then you must have a lot of money invested in the market, which means that your financial input gives companies more money that they can use to expand, which results in more jobs . No, Marxist doctrine teaches you that economy is the base of everything. Creative energy being the time and effort of skilled, educated inventors (A rarity, in case you haven't noticed). There's only a finite amount of people who could proficiently design a car, ergo a smart majority would vote to have all of these proficient inventors focus their time and efforts on the invention and development of sedans.As for "communist state" being a contradiction, well, we still live in a world composed of states. Not to mention, even if all of the workers go communist, what do you do about all of the business owners, self-employed, and other people who have no interest in communism? Exterminate them? It's either that or let them have their own state. And what says that history is guaranteed to be progressive?Not to mention, the Holocaust continued, and was accelerated, once Germany started to lose the war. Not to mention that the very idea of exterminating millions of potentially productive people makes no economic sense at all. And if there's still a potential profit, then new companies will spring up to take an advantage. Though it is possible to drive out companies producing product X through completely destroying the potential profits of producing product X. Enough pinheaded policies can make anything possible.

And both flats and big houses generate profits, ergo both are constructed."One dollar, one vote" ends up working, as the massed dollars of people with small wallets ends up being quite powerful. It's not like pickup trucks are toys of the rich, yet thousands of ever-better models are produced due to demand from blue collar consumers. And it's not as if "everyone gets the same amount of power" is a better idea. Giving the same amount of power to a productive citizen and a lazy wastrel hardly seems like a good idea for creating a stable society. After all, if you can be lazy and still have the same amount of power as a hard worker, then why not be lazy? Hardly. If the entire economy is focused on producing sedans, then all of the creative energy will be focused on them, resulting in superior sedans. It would only make sense for the 51% majority to vote for entirely focusing the means of production on sedans. They might throw in some lousy other kinds of cars, but in our mythical communist state the people are going to vote to spend the most time/effort/creativity developing the most popular vehicle: The sedan. It shows. And societies can also act upon grossly irrational instincts. Witness that most favorite of examples, the Holocaust, where thousands of skilled German military personnel were diverted from fighting a war to engaging in eugenics gone berserk.Also, if society can be generalized to a series of rational economic decisions, then wouldn't it be fair to say the society has rationally decided on capitalism? This is becoming self-parody on your part. What, do you live in a neighborhood composed of bazillion dollar houses and so you feel justified in saying that "only expensive homes are built"? That would place you dangerously close to being a stereotypical Rich Kid Rebelling Against His Well-Off Daddy.As for the actual idea that only huge homes are built, that's almost to silly to contemplate. For starters, there's still profit in building small homes, so of course they're built. Strangely enough, they're often built by self-employed contractors who contract work from other self-employed tradesmen.

Maybe, just maybe, these people are paid more because their labor is more valuable. Though I should point out that you continue to ignore entrepreneurs, small business owners, skilled self-employed tradesmen, and other people who make plenty of money despite having no "boss". A leaderless group of humans is a rather hideous, though fortunately short-lived spectacle. There must be leaders of some form, even in communal societies, and strangely enough, most of the countries that have tried to push towards communism seem to end up with dictators in charge. Gads. Today's business owners don't "decide" what to produce in some Godlike sense. They simply cater to public demand, though they can influence what specific products people buy through advertising. Pepsi and Coke may try to control their segment of the market (The market for darkish, caramel-flavored soft drinks), but they can only do so because lots of people like caramel flavored soft drinks. If nobody liked these, then Coke and Pepsi would not sell. If a company attempted to sell a product that nobody wanted, then that company would crash and burn, simple as that. So if 51% of the population decides that they want to only manufacture sedans, the other 49% are fucked out of getting the vehicles that they want? Interesting. At least under capitalism, even if all of the car companies decided to produce one type of vehicle, another company would quickly spring up to address the desire for other vehicles.And I don't think history has "ended". Indeed, people in the Ivory Towers will continue to think up Big Ideas that cost millions of lives when states attempt to implement these ideas . You know, "some eggs must be broken to make an omelet" and all that BS. Strange how everyone wants to be the chef and nobody volunteers to be an egg.

More like an entire alternate universe. Out of curiosity, how exactly do the "upper class" hand out these privileges? Is there some sort of knighting ceremony where some randomly selected people are appointed to the bourgeoisie?Excluding the "Paris Hilton" (Spoiled brat who inherits cash) and "J.K. Rowling" (Person who comes up with an idea that goes big time) extremes, don't most people with good incomes do it the Old Fashioned Way (I.e. Earn it, through years of hard work and/or years of intense studying)? Sure, not millions, but a quarter million or so per year is nothing to sneeze at. Hell, I've seen guys who make much more than that in various trades, even when they're dumb as rocks and only have a high-school diploma. All they do is learn a trade and start their own small company. Sure, the work is tough, and working long stretches of 16-hour days can be grueling, but these guys have enough money to comfortably retire by their 40s. Nobody said it's easy to make a large sum of money, but I don't see it as a matter of pure luck. Hmmm. Well, Wikipedia defines communism as "...an ideology that seeks to establish a classless, stateless social organization based on common ownership of the means of production." Unless this definition is incorrect, communism doesn't sound particularly appealing (Unless, of course, you end up in control of a communist country. Then you can have fun dictatoring away). What the hell does the commonly owned production do, besides produce vital necessities? What does it make? Certainly not luxury goods, as those are nasty relics of capitalism and make people greedy and competitive. Work-related equipment? Fine, but eventually it's got to produce something to keep the people entertained, as manual labor and manufacturing jobs only seem entertaining to the people who've never done them for a living. So maybe the whole system is created to make vaguely fun, yet not luxurious, things: You know, like bubble gum, titty magazines, or bicycles.

I'd been thinking the same thing. Really, the Civil War is the only war that's taken place on American soil where the local results could be seen as cataclysmic. Still, even that war did not result in the "lost generations" of the World Wars. Also, due to our national military power, we can indulge in foreign adventures without fear of being driven back and invaded ourselves. Even if the Iraqi resistance succeeds in driving the US out of Iraq, it's not like they'd then hop on freighters and stage an invasion of New York. We don't have to worry about blowback, so there's none of the fear that our actions will have any consequences worse than national embarrassment. AFAIK, they're only done in a few states and prisoners have the option of more modern execution methods. Well, Mandela did participate in guerrilla activities at one point during his life, so that could be enough for Bush to label him a terrorist.

Yep, lots of Colombian Bam-Bam (Not to mention that he drank gallons of bourbon). Remember, it's OK when your guy has been a drunken, drug-addled womanizer, but it's not OK when their guy has such a history .

Full ArticleI like the part at the end, where there's a fairly direct admission that the White House doesn't really care about the contents of Petraeus's report.

I'm rooting for Ron Paul . Edit - Regarding Paul's stance towards abortion, his desire seems to be to return it to a state/local issue. He has supported legislation to prevent abortion from being legalized or banned at the federal level. I find it hard to believe that an ardent Federalist like Paul would federally ban abortion; Under a Paul presidency, it would probably remain legal in many areas. And his foreign policy stance is a pleasant deviation from the Republican party line:

I've got a few software questions for you guys. I've got an AVI file of a concert, which contains no scenes (It's just continuous footage). The sound is of good quality. I was wondering if there was a program that could: 1. Record the soundtrack into an MP3 file. 2. Split that soundtrack into distinct songs so I could burn them onto a CD and listen to the concert on my stereo.

What is your point? India, Pakistan, Russia, and China all have reasonably rational leaders. Their rhetoric is just that, rhetoric. They may spew inflammatory talk and rattle their sabers, but their leaders are not religious madmen who would like to see an apocalyptic nuclear disaster. Second, comparing Bush to Ahmadinejad is like comparing Snidley Whiplash to Hitler. Bush's beliefs might've given him a reason to justify his invasion of Iraq, but the reason that the war was actually launched had to do with grossly naive neoconservative policy. Bush didn't invade Iraq because he wished to trigger an apocalypse. He's a devout Christian, but he's not a full-bore wannabe religious warrior who would like to help create Armageddon. As for wanting to turn Middle Eastern governments in American-style democracies, that's a reflection of the silliness of neoconservatism, it's not religious. It would be an improvement to the local problems of cultural stagnation, Blame-The-Jews politics, and violent religious fanaticism, but it's not a realistic solution. Still, it's a real problem, unlike Ahmadinejad's apparent belief in the "problem" of the whole world not being under Islamic rule. Third, I don't see how the US has been threatening to use nukes, and Israel isn't threatening to casually nuke Iranian civilians. The most I heard was a plan to use tactical nuclear weapons to knock out Iranian nuclear facilities. As for Iran not threatening to use nuclear weapons, it doesn't matter that they haven't directly said "We want to nuke Israel". The Iranian government has made frequent comments that are violently hostile, has funded proxy armies that have launched attacks on Israel, and is now engaging in a nuclear development program. That seems pretty damn hostile to me. I've seen news stories concerning the purchase and/or development of nuclear materials appropriate only for weapon creation, and I seriously doubt that Iran is only developing nuclear energy to create power reactors. The Israelis might be forced to take some form of action, as they can't exactly be expected to wait for a mushroom cloud to appear over Tel Aviv before they act. It's pretty hard to disconnect his desire to wipe out Israel with a desire to wipe out Israelis. Not to mention, Iran is actively attempting to kill Israelis through its Hezbollah proxy army.