Flaser Posts

All true, especially when you're buying new hardware. I would only bother with the Core 2 line if I desperately needed a PC and didn't have much money, otherwise I'd buy a Intel i3 (just enough money) or i5 (this is a good investment).

If you buy an i7 you're a rich yuppie with too much money and little common sense. Resource intensive corporate deployment can sensibly use high-end hardware, but for this price no sane end user should buy it.

However he's buying from a friend, so the system could be older.

Another tidbit:

You do realize though that a used Pentium 4 system can be bought dirt cheap? (50-200$ or even for free since businesses will be glad if you get it "off their hands" when they upgrade so they don't have to pay for environmentally safe disposal. These PCs are perfectly serviceable and enough for a bunch of purposes.

Even Pentium 4 (especially high-end models) can handle 720p playback. For 1080p (Full HD, lot bigger resolution) playback you might need to use CoreAVC, a commercial decoding software (it works like a codec, so all Direct Show application can benefit from its use... ie MPC-HC, Windows Media Player, Winamp, etc., etc.) that can drastically improve your decoding.

I'd say 2.5-3.0 Ghz Pentium 4 (that is *NOT* Celeron!) CPUs can reliably handle 720p playback, but 1080p is not guaranteed.

Later Intel processors - Dual Core, Core 2, Core 2 Duo, etc. - , can all reliably deal with playback, especially since FFDShow now support multi-core decoding (so it takes advantage of the fact that new CPUs are in fact 2-4 actual cores in a single chip, tightly integrated).

I don't know about Celeron CPUs though, but that's becoming less and less an issue as nowadays there's no strict division between the two brands as there are loads of intermediate processors and often the amount of cache is the only difference.

...if it has 1 MByte of cache, then it should be powerful enough. If your friend can't tell you this, then you can check it on Intel's site. There's a specific model code on the top of each and every Intel CPU. Use this site to find out what it really can do:

http://processorfinder.intel.com/
http://www.intel.com/support/processors/sb/cs-016552.htm

For instance I use an E5200 Dual Core chip that's practically a new architecture (Wolfdale) with less cache... and I got it for 120$. (In the US this would've cost me 70$, yeah I gotta pay tax too, and the bastard retailers convert prices as if 1 Euro = 1$... so, yeah).

...the new Core i3, i5 and i7 CPUs are all more than capable of Full HD playback.

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...for the same breakdown of AMD processors, you'll have to ask someone else, as I've been baptized in the church of Intel and have yet to commit heresy.

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Is that it? No.
Modern video-cards can sometimes help with decoding.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DXVA

DirectX Video Acceleration allows the GPU to help with playback.
To use it you need:

-1. DXVA compatible video-card. Check here to see which cards support it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Video_Decoder (...so anything after the HD 2000 series).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_PureVideo (G84+ core, NVidia's epileptic naming convention doesn't do anyone any favors).

-2. Use a renderer that's capable of taking advantage of this. (Ie. on Media Player Classic - Homecinema, you have to use the EVR renderer. This can be set in the program options). You'll also have to activate this feature on some media player programs. (For MPC-HC this has to be done by configuring the FFDShow filter).

Is DXVA necessary? Not really, most modern CPUs can handle playback on their own. However it can be a good thing as this will entirely offload playback to your video-card which can make the system more responsive and "snappier".

Fuck you and the horse you rode on, you grammar nazi!

Can't you get it in your mind that supernatural beings are just that - supernatural. Bohoo! They're not saints or dwarfs, these are fuckin' DEMONS!

I can't believe you're trying to pick a fight on the genealogy of imaginary creatures as if they've existed. You believe non of the western nations had anything similar to what the Japanese have? No, I'm not some fucking European chauvinist, I'm just pointing out that humans all around the globe are a lot more similar than we'd be given to think... we even dreamed up similar fantasies practically worlds apart in those ages when a man would likely never see the other side of the globe.

I could list some historian authors, but given that all of the ones I read were Hungarian that would be really helpful, right? There is good (well researched) *fiction* though that I can recommend in English from Robert Graves, titled "Greek Myths" (1955).

...and yeah, I need to swear a lot, it makes my prose flow more freely as I'm not bogged down by the need to write concise polite sentences for a fucktard who takes each and every critical reaction as an attack on his person and his beliefs.

You gotta do it like you'd do it with a girl. Carefully lineup and initially go slow, until it has accommodated you. Then you can increase the tempo.

BTW these things are quite good at building stamina/staying power.

You have no idea, do you?
For first, there's the Catholic mythology with more than 30 saints, and there that's a pantheon all of its own... with dozens of angels, devils, etc. etc. (though frankly these were pagan spirits, rituals, whatsoever that the Church absorbed and redressed in its own flavour. So when the people converted they could still hold their traditions, it was just "retconned" to be "Chritian").

Then you have the Norse and Greeco-Roman mythology which is pretty much the same, except the gods had different names over the ages... and different legends and myths were told about them, since a fucking 1000 years have passed.

Except just your garden variety "children's" Greek Mythology book, try and read something authentic, like one of the Viking Sagas or a book written by historians or culture antropologists.... hundreds of dwarfs (dark elves), elves, spritis, fey, minor gods, rivalizing pantheons (ie. the Irish vs. the Viking)...

...it's just as complicated and intricate as the Japanese.

All around the world, people saw weird shit they couldn't explain, and to be frank life and world's weird and idiosyncratic as-is. Today we have enough science (and it's beyond the grasp of most people) so that scientific detail can be a new mantra for the mindless masses... or JEEEHSUS!

The Tengas have breath holes so the pressure change from serious fucking doesn't ruin the silicone. Just rotate your onahole a couple of degrees until your dick lines up with the groove instead the breath hole.

Wrong. /d/ is for "alternative" hentai... like /d/ickgirl, /d/eep dicking, shitting /d/ick nipples, /d/ense feces... and worse.

Normal hentai is /h/, softcore is /e/.

/y/ is for Yaoi, and /u/ is Y/u/ri.

You're jerking off with it? No wonder it's nothing special. For fuck's sake, wedge it underneath something, so you can go hands free! ...the difference will be obvious.

Yeah, but the kiddies are not the ones holding the presentations. At least they get a look at what real know-how is (or in my case a look at how little I know :D)

All I see is marketing hype for laptop with a rather uninspired HID device instead a traditional QWERTY keyboard.
...and for the same price you could probably buy a gaming PC and a work laptop.

I never understood why people shell out 2-3x as much money so they can use their laptop for gaming. It will overheat, it won't have the same life expectancy (as either a desktop or work laptop) and you can't upgrade it (without it costing an arm and leg, for a system that already cost as much as a breast implants).

...and why the need to game wherever you are? That's for imbecile men-children who can't help but waste time whenever and where ever they are.

I mean come on, most of us has things like a job. If you go on a trip, chances are you have other things to do anyway:
-If it's business then you really should use your time to the fullest to do business (since either you or your company are paying top dollars to get you there).
-If it's leisure you're there either for the environment (tourism, scuba diving, trekking, mountain climbing, wildlife reserve sight-seeing, etc). or the people (friend, a comic/anime con, reltives, etc.) so you really should be doing what you're there for.

...and for communication, swapping data, heck even playing movies, browsing the net or watching porn/hentai you're mid-range work laptop is more than sufficient.

(...no, playing WOW is not a basic human need. Seek medical help now. I meant, NOW!)

All people (usually loudly) claiming to be "hackers" are script kiddies with too much time on their hands and overt narcissistic tendencies.

Meanwhile, real hackers are busy writing PhDs, actually *hacking* things, or holding conferences: http://www.defcon.org/

The two consoles have vastly different architecture. PS3 has a bunch of identical CPUs and is a powerhouse. The PS2 had dedicated, special chips and co-processors for various tasks. Even on PC all those have to be "emulated", and until recently when PCs became very powerful was beyond what is possible.

...I wonder is PS2 *emulation* (not native support) will ever be possible on the PS3.

In the EU Democrats would be conservatives, while the Republicans would be the lunatic fringe on the right.

I'm a European and my political views weigh to the left so I'm a socialist. I don't deny that although society has responsibility for each and every citizen (to each according to his needs, from each according his abilities), I agree with centrists and paleo-conservatives that the citizen in turn also has responsibility for his own welfare and that of the state.

Fiscally I'm conservative (there's no free meal), but I find neo-liberal/neo-conservative (in the US the two are pretty much the same) absolute capitalism abhorrent. I believe monetary reform is necessary, that nations should retake the monopoly from bank that fractional reserve banking should be abolished.

On the question of personal freedoms I'm a hard line liberal. Free speech, free religion, freedom of press, etc... This doesn't mean you're free to do anything. This means that as long as you're not endangering others or restricting *their* freedom, you can do whatever you want.

Since each eye only sees half of the images, effective frame-rate is halved. So you only see a 60 Hz display like those old CRT monitors. The switching between the left and right eye picture also creates a 60 Hz flickering effect.

The Ancient-, Middle Ages, the Renaissance beg to differ:
Lots of people were still killed with old fashioned cold steel. Back then a trained man could kill several opponents if he had skill, while a knight could kill dozens of peasants since he owned arms and armor far ahead what others could ever posses with their meager wealth.

Firearms, for all their deadliness are a great source of democracy: they give the common man the chance to kill the powerful tyrant, the wealthy lord, the trained soldier, the cunning assassin alike...
...with a flick of a finger and a little training.

Egality didn't become fashionable until serfs with weapons had the guts to enforce it - and could afford said weapons, and said weapons were effective enough. The rest is history.

What OS do you use?
Usually it's just right-clicking your desktop --> properties. You should see two devices now (two windows). Select you secondary display (that says something like XYZ Television), and set its resolution to either 1280x720 or 1920x1080 if you have a HD TV, 720x480 if you have a non HD one.

You might need to activate or tweak your secondary output, this is usually under the advanced options in a special control panel by your graphic driver.

...or the program could've been written by shitty programmers and only works with a specific version of DotNet Framework. (You could try updating DNF through windows update).

Check what version is actually supplied with the program and install that.

To all anime veterans: This is the declaration, if not war then open hostilities against all anime neophytes who've just discovered this medium and just gotta tell you why it's awesome.

Instead writing a manifesto, I'll just write who I am, where I come from and why these young ones annoy the fuck out of me. When I can, I ignore them, but that's hard to do when they scream in your face.

I've been watching anime for more than 15 years. That might have nothing on the heroic age western veterans of anime who started before I was even born, but at least I can say I've been at this for a while. Frankly I can sympathize more with their generation than those lucky enough to have Cartoon Network's adult swim and ANN pamper them from the get go.

Why? Because I live in East Europe. Beside a couple of titles (Sailor Moon, DBZ - the later was even banned!) no anime was broadcast here for a good 10 years. We didn't have fan-subbed VHS cassettes either. All we had was the Internet and shitty real media to early windows media (DivX done wrong) transcripts of said VHS tapes painstakingly leeched bit-by-bit through the then forming Internet. Often through dial-up... or you paid big bucks to a rich guy with broadband, so they'd burn them onto CD-R. Yes CDs. I still have a Neon Genesis Evangelion RIP around that was mpg. transcripts of VHS rips, so it took up 13 CDs.

So back then, anime was something rare, exotic and hard to get hold of. You had to go out of your way to get it, you were scouring the neonatal file-sharing networks that would give users used to the convenience of torrent nightmares, you arranged meeting and swapped CDs for big bucks like some shady music pirate.

Over the years I've watched hundreds of titles. Eventually the novelty wore off, but I was hooked by then. Every once in a while I found a title that was just awesome:
-Explosive Action!
-Really slap-stick and free flowing comedy!
-A nice story with some dramatic overtones that made you *think*
-A very good setting with some quaint questions about the state of life (back before the moe storm, anime used to pump out exotic settings by the dozen).
-Memorable characters who *felt* real, more than a mere collection of stereotypes

Is that type of anime gone? Hell no. It's just rare. It was rare back then too, but we old fans tend to reminiscence over the exceptionally good titles. 90% of everything is crap. That didn't change.

...but then YOU show up. YOU just SAW THE BEST THING EVER! It's SO COOL, because it has NINJAS in it! ...and all the super-kinetic ACTION!

Yeah, yeah I try to move out of the way, go about my business...

...but YOU KEEP SCREAMING, that I SHOULD WATCH IT! THAT IT's THE BEST THING EVER!

Now I'm pissed.

Entertaining? Maybe. For a newborn each and every joke is new. Good? Could be... chances are it won't. This isn't the OVA boom anymore. Anime like everything is else is done by committees, rarely daring to be experimental or even try new things. Best? Get real.

You want to know what's best is?

-BEST is when Spike blows you away as Blues is running in your veins and the whole world hurts.
-BEST is when Noriko blasts Jupiter away, and you can feel everything being ripped away from the heroines through the caprices of space-time dilation.
-BEST is when the heroine whispers to the hero "What big teeth you have!"... and Fuse "eats" her and discards the last of his humanity.
-BEST is when Goto screams "It's already too late now!" and the tension building all this time finally lets loose and all that can stop the coming chaos is the ragtag SV2 and one Shinobu Nagumo... who still has feelings for the man behind all of this.

So, young ones. What's to be done?
Watch some anime. Older titles. Newere titles. Broaden your horizons a bit. Experiment, try new things, let the new experiences build you. Eventually wisdom and a feel for what things are great will come to you on its own.

...just leave me the hell alone, until you can form coherent sentences and compare you favorite show to more than 2 titles.