Search found 6007 matches

by Xon
2018-03-01 09:39am
Forum: Off-Topic
Topic: What happened to "mockery of stupid people"?
Replies: 64
Views: 31990

Re: What happened to "mockery of stupid people"?

The old board was well on it's way to dead almost a decade ago, call it 2009, and the death began with the fall of the stupid ass senate even earlier, but the reality is even had this place been far more inviting and less toxic culturally and not gone through that left wing phase it would have stru...
by Xon
2013-07-23 06:10am
Forum: Science Fiction
Topic: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington
Replies: 754
Views: 169413

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington

There's about half a dozen sentient or near sentient alien species, none of them remotely close to spaceflight capability. One short story, however, mentions ruins of a distinct interstellar civilization, the Alphane, of great interest to achaeologists. At present, there are no known, active, inter...
by Xon
2013-07-22 08:34am
Forum: Science Fiction
Topic: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington
Replies: 754
Views: 169413

Re: Bit of Analysis: Honor Harrington

Ejection of fusion two. Note that the ejection doesn't immediately solve everything, there's a delay after jettisoning the hull plate, and there's still a large fusion explosion in close proximity to the ship, doing crippling damage. Honorverse ships have ludicrously energetic fusion reactors. Late...
by Xon
2012-11-15 07:58pm
Forum: Pure Star Wars
Topic: Disney to acquire Lucasfilm
Replies: 512
Views: 94303

Re: Disney to acquire Lucasfilm

On the other hand, it’s George Lucas’ property and if he wants to ignore the books and comics, that’s his perfect right. I can't say I disagree. Now I admit I have my own fanboyism about the EU: I'd love to see Thrawn up on the big screen owning the Rebel scum - at least for the first couple movies...
by Xon
2012-06-21 04:21am
Forum: News and Politics
Topic: Aus School Chaplaincy program ruled constitutionally invalid
Replies: 5
Views: 1477

Re: Aus School Chaplaincy program ruled constitutionally inv

First reconfirming that the Commonwealth cannot discriminate or test eligibility or trust based on religious beliefs. Second on the grounds that by funding an inherently religious program the Federal government had exceeded it's authority. This is actually completely wrong, did you even read the ar...
by Xon
2012-05-11 08:35am
Forum: News and Politics
Topic: Budget Night 2012.
Replies: 66
Views: 7473

Re: Budget Night 2012.

Amusingly, the contract termination fees for the NBN have ratched up to $1.8 billion and it's probably going to get higher before the next election.
by Xon
2012-04-27 12:55pm
Forum: Science Fiction
Topic: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extractor
Replies: 297
Views: 35887

Re: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extract

I'll also point out simply pulling firepower out of the raw unit stats isn't going to work. All non-laser weapons have AOE, with the damage being applied using an inverse cube relationship (with a scaling constant) over the blast radius. The hard range cut-off is easily explainable as because Total ...
by Xon
2012-04-27 12:32pm
Forum: Gaming, Electronics and Computers
Topic: Windows 8 on USB to be Enterprise-only feature
Replies: 26
Views: 5688

Re: Windows 8 on USB to be Enterprise-only feature

Which is fine because I didn't claim it. Great, maybe you can get around to actually reading what I quoted in the first point( here ). Which ironically has nothing todo with the problems of USB-boot, but of how the OS reacts to an device with the same unique ID being plugged in which is already in ...
by Xon
2012-04-27 12:14pm
Forum: Science Fiction
Topic: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extractor
Replies: 297
Views: 35887

Re: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extract

oh out of boredom. 4 MW laser, 5mm spot diameter, 10 microseconds delay between pulses and 50 80 kj pulses can get something like 80 cm of armour penetration with a 5 cm wide hole. For the record, IA stats on armour is that Thunderhawks have 55-65 mm of armour, Land Raiders and Warhounds have somet...
by Xon
2012-04-20 12:03pm
Forum: Gaming, Electronics and Computers
Topic: Windows 8 on USB to be Enterprise-only feature
Replies: 26
Views: 5688

Re: Windows 8 on USB to be Enterprise-only feature

Also, linux's solution to these buggy hardware (usb devices with non-unique serials)? Don't use them . And in case you missed it, one of the large reasons Windows doesn't offer this feature is licencing. Windows Activation which requires binding to hardware serials, which makes USB-based boot rather...
by Xon
2012-04-20 11:39am
Forum: Gaming, Electronics and Computers
Topic: Windows 8 on USB to be Enterprise-only feature
Replies: 26
Views: 5688

Re: Windows 8 on USB to be Enterprise-only feature

Next you'll be telling us we can't possibly boot from CD or floppy because there's no way for such a thing to be uniquely identified. This isn't remotely the same, and if you knew a damn thing about computer's you'ld know it. CD/floppies are tracked by controller and port, and explicitly do not sup...
by Xon
2012-04-20 04:01am
Forum: Gaming, Electronics and Computers
Topic: Windows 8 on USB to be Enterprise-only feature
Replies: 26
Views: 5688

Re: Windows 8 on USB to be Enterprise-only feature

Your post is a complete non sequiter. That describes the behavior of the Windows USB stack on a machine that has already booted. For reference, Linux has been able to boot from a flash drive for as long as motherboards have had the option to set a USB device as a boot device. That is the behaviour ...
by Xon
2012-04-19 08:56pm
Forum: Science Fiction
Topic: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extractor
Replies: 297
Views: 35887

Re: Somewhere in 40k an ARM commander builds a metal extract

They use ground-level warp gates, but doubtless there are awful novels describing vast and powerful fleets that simply never appeared. :V There was the fluff written by the game producers publish on the old(now long long gone) multiplayer meta-game. Little stuff like a single fight with less than 4...
by Xon
2012-04-19 08:52pm
Forum: Gaming, Electronics and Computers
Topic: Windows 8 on USB to be Enterprise-only feature
Replies: 26
Views: 5688

Re: Windows 8 on USB to be Enterprise-only feature

Why? It's not like there should be any functional difference between booting off of flash memory instead of physical platters. Just look at SSDs. There is a significant technical difference. Why does Windows not recognize my USB device as the same device if I plug it into a different port? You may ...
by Xon
2012-04-02 07:22pm
Forum: Fantasy
Topic: GoT:Clash of Kings Season 2 Spoiler Free
Replies: 163
Views: 22780

Re: GoT:Clash of Kings Season 2 Spoiler Free

Not 10 minutes in and the councilers are saying they have enough grain stockpiled for a 5 year winter.

I think this firmly puts to rest the idea that that insane place doesn't have crazy long winters.
by Xon
2012-03-18 06:15am
Forum: Science, Logic, And Morality
Topic: Current Antibiotics Risk Becoming Useless.
Replies: 35
Views: 7216

Re: Current Antibiotics Risk Becoming Useless.

Either way, it is a good case on to not frivolously use antibiotics everywhere. The only saving grace is the antibiotics commonly used in animal raising are not the various holdout antibiotics used for humans. But , continuing to select for resistance to common antibiotics means those common antibio...
by Xon
2012-03-18 02:27am
Forum: Science, Logic, And Morality
Topic: Current Antibiotics Risk Becoming Useless.
Replies: 35
Views: 7216

Re: Current Antibiotics Risk Becoming Useless.

I'm not sure how much the huge animal market actually matters, lots of focus it put on that issue but the actual range of antibiotics being used for that purpose is limited. Also something to consider is the hospital environments themselves. linky The World Health Organisation (WHO) says drug use i...
by Xon
2012-02-05 09:00pm
Forum: Gaming, Electronics and Computers
Topic: Windows 8
Replies: 30
Views: 5018

Re: Windows 8

WHSv1's system could corrupt data, so it's no real surprise Microsoft killed it (and probably went to architect it from scratch). The WHSv1 was a horrible hack, I'm not suprised they had significant problems. I thought deduplication was still going to be third-party pluggable? Win8 Server will have...
by Xon
2012-02-05 08:56pm
Forum: Gaming, Electronics and Computers
Topic: Ubisoft DRM renders games unplayable next week
Replies: 35
Views: 5135

Re: Ubisoft DRM renders games unplayable next week

Dunno, some games I knew were cracked fast but were unstable as fuck until the teams did another couple tries. (crashes, random graphic glitches, you know) Most of the time that was the fact that the game itself was buggy. It's always amusing when the cracked copy has actual bugfixes to make the ga...
by Xon
2012-02-02 07:07pm
Forum: Gaming, Electronics and Computers
Topic: Windows 8
Replies: 30
Views: 5018

Re: Windows 8

That's actually REALLY funny. Good, but funny. That's precisely what the FIRST version of Home Server had, and was yanked from the SECOND version of Home Server to a universal chorus of 'WTF! Give that back!' From the documentation, it's a fairly major rework. Instead of a filter driver on a normal...
by Xon
2012-02-02 02:46am
Forum: Gaming, Electronics and Computers
Topic: Windows 8
Replies: 30
Views: 5018

Re: Windows 8

There really isn't much in the way of low hanging fruit to be added to the OS to make the new version dramatically better. So, my question: how 'worth it' will it be to your "average" PC user, ie: the sort of person who doesn't have a fucking clue what any of the stuff in Xon's post means....
by Xon
2012-02-01 06:22am
Forum: Gaming, Electronics and Computers
Topic: Windows 8
Replies: 30
Views: 5018

Re: Windows 8

From what I can tell there are few to no features that normal non tablet or touchscreen users will want. I'm actually looking forward to a number of significant low-level changes that Win8 will have, which only shine on the desktop and server. Server & client; Built in usb3 support. Storage Spa...
by Xon
2012-01-27 08:32am
Forum: Gaming, Electronics and Computers
Topic: Legal question on downloading music-internet radio/youtube
Replies: 8
Views: 1648

Re: Legal question on downloading music-internet radio/youtu

If you download a video of Youtube, you aren't doing anything different from accessing it. Accessing copyrighted content on Youtube isn't illegal, just uploading content to which you have no copyright is prohibited. B.Content is provided to you AS IS. You may access Content for your information and...
by Xon
2012-01-12 06:13am
Forum: Gaming, Electronics and Computers
Topic: Fatnerd rage incoming: Diablo for consoles.
Replies: 74
Views: 6970

Re: Fatnerd rage incoming: Diablo for consoles.

Why are people so fucking bent on the bloody control scheme? If someone is a PC or console Nazi just admit that you are a hater, why the crazy theories on mouse vs pad? The shop/inventory/skills UI for Skyrim is a classic example of a godaweful console UI slapped onto the PC port with utterly no re...
by Xon
2012-01-06 09:27pm
Forum: Science Fiction
Topic: Sci-Fi scenario - aliens evolve limited reality warping.
Replies: 12
Views: 3327

Re: Sci-Fi scenario - aliens evolve limited reality warping.

The proto-Xeelee where like this. They lived as a peacefull federation in the quark–gluon plasma in the after-glow of the big bang. Faced with a war with unstoppable creatures from beyond thier 'light horizon' they inflicted run away inflation onto the universe as a last ditch desperate measure to s...