Messages

331

Off Topic / Re: The Computer Megathread

« on: June 14, 2012, 07:54:13 PM »

A retail disk/key of Windows can be used on up to 3 installations.
An OEM disk/key of Windows is only good for 1 installation.

You can install both retail versions and OEM versions as many times as you want. The OEM version cannot be transferred to a different computer. You may have to activate the OEM version over the phone if you reinstall it.

This does bring up the issue of George Washington's axe - at what point does your computer become a new computer if you upgrade it? The answer is it's tied to the motherboard, you will probably need to call up Microsoft and ask them nicely to activate it for you if you change it. I don't entirely know how this works since I've never been in this position but it's worth a try.

In any case, you will have no problem reinstalling the OEM version on a laptop since you will probably never replace the motherboard. This is why the license key is generally printed on a sticker and stuck to the bottom of a laptop, just in case you ever need to reformat your laptop.

Ars Technica has a great article (including the long form of what I just summarized) on reinstalling Windows on laptops. I'd highly recommend anybody purchasing a laptop do this.

332

Modification Help / Re: What does JVS even stand for?

« on: June 14, 2012, 06:36:33 PM »

The correct answer is that JVS doesn't stand for anything. It's basically just branding Trader sticks on his mods that lets you know it's his.

Just ask him yourself.

http://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=22573.msg560818#msg560818
http://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=24770.msg375141#msg375141
http://forum.blockland.us/index.php?topic=23789.msg925202#msg925202


Coincidentally he used to be working on a mod called Jedi vs Sith for pre-retail Blockland which happened to be abbreviated as JVS. As I recall it was never was released.

333

Off Topic / Re: lol olol clone has been taking shots

« on: June 09, 2012, 05:06:48 PM »

A drunk person wouldn't be posting complete, almost sense-making posts, they would be typing random stuff.

I posted these while drunk:

If anybody is building their own guitar amp and wants some free CGW 20K Glass resistors you can PM me, I've got around 10 of them and no particular use for them. I've also got large surplus of assorted electrolytic caps, milspec resistors, power resistors, carbon fiber resistors, and a few ceramic caps. I'll send them to you for free, they'll fit in an envelope so it's like 50 cents shipping for me and they only cost me a couple cents each when I bought them. It'll save you a little money and time digging around on jameco, digikey, amazon, ebay, or wherever you are buying your parts. It will also free up some space in my parts bin.

I've also got a couple of Sorenson 125V AC orange neon lamps that will pull light right out of a standard electric socket if you're interested in making your project light up, but I only have a few to give away. I've personally shoved them in an outlet so I know they work. I also have a bunch of green LEDs.

I would buy the camera personally. Your computer isn't terrible although you will probably want to upgrade it in the next year or so. The RAM upgrade you're looking into is only 30 dollars or so. I used to have 4GB and I recently upgraded my ram to 8GB for no particular reason other than I could and it was $30. Coincidentally I also happen to do a bit of 3D CAD and experiment with virtual machines... But there's really no reason not to have at least 8GB of ram when it's only around 60-80 dollars.

Well one thing that could be contributing to the overall slowness of the operating system (not the slowness of the Internet though) is booting off of a CD. Installing Ubuntu to your hard drive and dual booting will make the operating system significantly faster in general.

I don't really have any good advice on how to improve your connection. For what it's worth though, I can tell you that that I run xubuntu on a laptop with a b/g/n wireless card. My college uses a n-band routers to provide wireless Internet access across campus with b/g as a fallback. It turns out that the linux n-band driver for my wireless card is not very good, and there is a significant speed improvement by disabling n and sticking with g even though n technically has a higher max transfer rate. Use sudo lshw > spec.txt to dump your system specs to a text file, then open it up in gedit to find your wireless adapter. Then look online to see if there's any compatibility issues between linux and your wireless transceiver.

334

Off Topic / Re: lol olol clone has been taking shots

« on: June 09, 2012, 03:51:21 PM »

omfg qft
i would rather drink wine than beer and wine is incredibly feminine and dilute.

Wine is between 9 and 15% ABV which is more alcoholic than beer or those fruity malt drinks. This is why one glass of wine is considered to be an equivalent amount of alcohol as one bottle beer even though the bottle of beer is larger than a properly portioned glass of wine.

For example, most of the ales I've ordered have been served in a stemless brandy snifter, which is basically an oversized wine glass. One beer fills the glass about 1 and a half times. An equivalent serving of wine might fill between half and a third of the glass.

Wine isn't particularly feminine either, I know a lot of people who drink wine. Really the only drinks considered particularly feminine anymore are fruity mixed drinks - and there's even exceptions to that. You might get some raised eyebrows if you ordered an appletini but ordering a margarita would be normal. I couldn't really tell you how you can tell, it's just kind of intuition. I suspect it has to do with the ratio of alcohol to fruit syrup.

In any case, assigning gender to beverages is a very silly concept.

335

Off Topic / Re: I need a certain program

« on: June 09, 2012, 03:25:24 PM »

Find a blank DVD, burn a copy of ubunutu to it, then boot off the DVD. Enjoy your worry free Internet browsing that won't leave any evidence behind, won't damage the computer, will leave the parental control program undamaged, and can't be blocked without password protecting the BIOS (which nobody ever does).

What you do with this knowledge is your problem now.

336

Off Topic / Re: I need a certain program

« on: June 09, 2012, 03:12:07 PM »

If you know the name of the program you can use the command taskkill /f /im <name>.exe to kill it. The easiest way to get it to work would be to schedule the batch file to run every 30 minutes using the scheduler.

You can also check to see if the program dumps a log in the application event log (Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Event Viewer) and set the taskkiller to fire when the event is created.

Ideally though you'd disable the program from running in the first place rather than launching another process to end it when it's created.

337

Off Topic / Re: What is up with the forum clock?

« on: June 09, 2012, 02:55:18 PM »

Yeah, mine's always been about 6 minutes slow. You can fix this by adding .1 to your offset. For example, mine's 1.1. I live in the central timezone.

338

Off Topic / Re: I need a certain program

« on: June 09, 2012, 02:52:22 PM »

you can go to start menu>run>msconfig

go to startup and uncheck whatever program you want deaded.

You should start by trying this. You would be surprised at how many stupid programs decide that they need to startup as soon as your computer does. I gaurentee you that if you go through this every couple of months and turn off the programs you don't really need to run at startup, your computer will probably boot to the desktop in half the time.

After you try msconfig you can also check the system task scheduler. It's in Accessories>System Tools. You won't find as many programs here as you will in msconfig, in fact, it's possible you won't find any, but it doesn't hurt to check.

339

Off Topic / Re: let's talk amps, distortion, and guitars bitches

« on: June 09, 2012, 12:26:00 AM »

If anybody is building their own guitar amp and wants some free CGW 20K Glass resistors you can PM me, I've got around 10 of them and no particular use for them. I've also got large surplus of assorted electrolytic caps, milspec resistors, power resistors, carbon fiber resistors, and a few ceramic caps. I'll send them to you for free, they'll fit in an envelope so it's like 50 cents shipping for me and they only cost me a couple cents each when I bought them. It'll save you a little money and time digging around on jameco, digikey, amazon, ebay, or wherever you are buying your parts. It will also free up some space in my parts bin.

I've also got a couple of Sorenson 125V AC orange neon lamps that will pull light right out of a standard electric socket if you're interested in making your project light up, but I only have a few to give away. I've personally shoved them in an outlet so I know they work. I also have a bunch of green LEDs.

340

Off Topic / Re: What should I upgrade to my PC?

« on: June 08, 2012, 11:46:24 PM »

I would buy the camera personally. Your computer isn't terrible although you will probably want to upgrade it in the next year or so. The RAM upgrade you're looking into is only 30 dollars or so. I used to have 4GB and I recently upgraded my ram to 8GB for no particular reason other than I could and it was $30. Coincidentally I also happen to do a bit of 3D CAD and experiment with virtual machines... But there's really no reason not to have at least 8GB of ram when it's only around 60-80 dollars.

341

Off Topic / Re: Ubuntu OS Internet Problems

« on: June 08, 2012, 11:39:22 PM »

Well one thing that could be contributing to the overall slowness of the operating system (not the slowness of the Internet though) is booting off of a CD. Installing Ubuntu to your hard drive and dual booting will make the operating system significantly faster in general.

I don't really have any good advice on how to improve your connection. For what it's worth though, I can tell you that that I run xubuntu on a laptop with a b/g/n wireless card. My college uses a n-band routers to provide wireless Internet access across campus with b/g as a fallback. It turns out that the linux n-band driver for my wireless card is not very good, and there is a significant speed improvement by disabling n and sticking with g even though n technically has a higher max transfer rate. Use sudo lshw > spec.txt to dump your system specs to a text file, then open it up in gedit to find your wireless adapter. Then look online to see if there's any compatibility issues between linux and your wireless transceiver.

342

Off Topic / Re: The Computer Megathread

« on: June 07, 2012, 11:21:56 PM »

Is it just because of the low megahertz clock?

No, it's because it's a workstation card. The hardware and driver are optimized for running CAD packages and rendering software, not games.

Also, some workstation cards have DMS-59 connectors, which is not the same as a DVI connection even though it looks a lot like one. It can be inconvenient for consumers because as far as I know, DMS-59 adapters don't come with HDMI ends which means you have to use bulky DVI or VGA connectors that don't carry audio.

In my experience, people building their own CAD workstations tend to put gaming cards in them anyway because they're about half the cost of a workstation card. Right now, a top of the line 690 will run you 1k. That Quadro Force workstation card pushes 4k. Incidentally, if you were wondering why you couldn't find that card on newegg before, it's because you were looking on the wrong newegg. Welcome to the enterprise world where you can buy $5000 10 core processors, cases come in two flavors: rack mounted or hanging off the back of a monitor because it's a thin client running vmware, and this thing.

343

Forum Games / Re: Blockland Writes a Choose your Own Adventure Novel

« on: June 07, 2012, 10:35:12 PM »

Okay, I've posted the story in the main post. Here is the download link anyway.

Ninja guy is up.

344

Forum Games / Re: Blockland Writes a Choose your Own Adventure Novel

« on: June 07, 2012, 03:21:18 PM »

I'll have the story uploaded and the turn order up when I get off work tonight.

Feel free to download the program and learn how it works so you're ready for when your turn tolls around.

345

Forum Games / Blockland Writes a Choose your Own Adventure Novel

« on: June 06, 2012, 08:34:44 PM »

Ever wanted to be a published author? Well now you can!

Twine is a tool for writing hyperlink based adventure stories. It's really easy to use and runs on Windows and Mac.

How to Participate
The story will be passed from person to person to edit. If you would like a chance to add something to the story, post here and let me know and I'll add you to the end of list. It will be on a first come, first served basis, and once we reach the end of the list we'll cycle back to the first person.

When you receive the story, you'll have a day to make changes and upload it to the next person. If you don't your copy within 24 hours, your turn is skipped and the next person gets to go. No exceptions. I'll keep the player list updated here so people know who is playing, but other than that, this should basically run itself.

You may go as soon as the person before you uploads the story. If they upload it 2 hours after getting it, you can take your turn immediately or wait for their turn to end first.

The story will be written in Twine. If you want to read the documentation, here it is. I had no trouble using it without reading it though, it's pretty straightforward once you figure it out.

Turn Order

1. Wedge
2. Ninja guy < it's this guy's turn
3. SirLancelot7
4. Fireboy
5. masterockets
6. LOL:D
7. Cybertails1998

Rules
I only have a couple of rules:

• Anything goes. The story doesn't need to make sense logically, although the story should remain continuous. You're welcome to walk down the street on one page and fly through space on the next as long as you provide some means for it to happen. You can breathe water, walk up walls, fly through the air, or spontaneously turn into a rubber tree. It's up to you.
• Write in the second person.
• Check your spelling.
• Don't write over other peoples' work if you can help it. Ask them first if you want to add something to it.
• Follow the forum rules. Here they are, reproduced for your convenience:

1. Do not post ambiguous topics. 
2. Do not post adult content.
3. No warez.
4. Use the Search feature before posting a question.
5. Do not plea for sympathy.
6. Think before you post.
7. Do not flame.
8. Do not cross post.
9. Do not advertise other forums.
10. No pyramid/referral schemes.
11. No chain-letter style spam.

Current Story Arcs
A list of the different "story arcs," basically mostly self-contained stories within the story. More will sprout up as people make their own additions, and this list will quickly grow out of date.

An Adventurer is You
An evil dragon is terrorizing the elves of Canada and it's up to you to put a stop to it. (starts at "go on an adventure")

Kroger Quest
You're a wizard just trying finish their grocery shopping when suddenly everything gets turned upside down. (starts at "go inside")

Theatrical Genius
You're a talented stage performer going on zany adventures with everyone's favorite British playwright. (starts at "theatrical genius")

Exit, Stage Right
You walk out of a bar only to discover that your life is some kind of Middle Age Truman Show. (starts at "exit, stage right")

Download the Story

I try and put the most current version of the story here, but it may be updated too quickly. Check the thread for a most recent version.

Download link:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/11513588/story1.tws