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No BS Podcast

No BS Podcast #76 The Podcast of Olympian Proportions Edition

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The podcast gang goes for the gold this week, bringing you all the latest tech news. First off, Norm takes a break from his pommel horse practice to talk about Nehalem and our exclusive interview with John Carmack.

We also answer your tech questions! On this episode, we discuss whether you should defrag your SSD drive, what mobo gives you the best bang for your buck, the best way to transport your PC--and much, much more. Gordon Mah Ung also takes the floor for a few minutes to supply us with another Rant of the Week!

Don't forget! There's still time to enter our Win a Dream Date with Norm competition. To qualify, send a song, photo collage, or video to maximumpcpodcast@gmail.com explaining why you want to spend the day with Norm. The winner will enjoy a delicious chaperoned lunch with online editor Norm and get an exclusive, behind-the-scenes tour of the Maximum PC Lab. Don't delay, the deadline is August 14!

Do you have a tech question? A comment? A tale of technological triumph? Just need to get something off your chest? Email us at maximumpcpodcast@gmail.com or call our 24-hour No BS Podcast hotline at 877.404.1337 x1337--operators are standing by.

Subscribe: http://feeds.feedburner.com/maximumpc/1337

 

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COMMENTS:11
COMMENTS
avatarStar Wars: EU

Just like any series, there are good books and not-as-good books, but the Zahn books are AS GOOD AS, if not better than the OT material.  Sure as hell better than the PT material.  Zahn's a great author, but so are a lot of the EU writers.  Lucasarts does a great job managing characters and continuity across the novels, and you get some really great storylines, as many of the books are written as many-novel story arcs, and many of them focus on characters from the movies we love who don't get a lot of screen time.

 Normally, I agree with Gordon.  Maybe he's tried reading some of the EU stuff, maybe he hasn't, but I have to completely disagree with you on your anti-EU stance.  If you want to quickly pound through the Thrawn Trilogy, I'd recommend the excellent graphic novel versions, available on Amazon: (search for)  Star Wars: Heir to the Empire (Dark Horse Collection.)

 

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Xander: "Ugh, OK, you know what? I think we need to zap our PRAM... with a cup of joe."

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avatarMaybe i was a little harsh....

I have read some TZ stuff in the past but "children of the jedi" by Barbara Hambly ruined it for me. And whats with all this CG shit anyways?  I mean Lucas had a lot to do with the stories origins, but this shit over the last 10 years gives me a bitter taste in my mouth.  I don't care what anyway else says, the new Indiana Jones movie was fucking stupid!  'Lead lined' fridge half a mile from a fucking nuke? 'His body would be perfectly preserved" if it survived the fucking melting process? Aliens now? wtf?!?!     Shia aLebeouf is the biggest douche in hollywood since matthew mcconaughey.  Episodes 1-3 were a big pile of shit, Lucas's almost michael bayish with all of his CG masturbations that he calls a movie.   What i am trying to say is that the best movies in anyones book (episodes #5-6 "your full of shit if you disagree') had the least George Lucas tampering (Irvin Kershner directing 5 and Richard Marquand directing #6).  So all i am saying is that he needs a fucking hobby away from movie making, his glory days are long gone (he's a lot like the Toronto Maple leafs ( I am Canadian give me a break), who fill the stands on past glories with noone facing the fact they havent won a stanley cup in 41 years!)  The star wars universe is dead, and George Lucas killed it.

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avatarAgreed

I agree, especially with the Michael Stackpole novels.  Basically, if the author got a hardcover book out of the publisher, you can bet that it is worth a read. 

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That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

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avatarSo, should I defrag my SSD?

We also answer your tech questions! On this episode, we discuss whether you should defrag your SSD drive...

 

 Did i miss that part?

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avatarbsd is not linux

bsd is Berkeley software distribution it is unix

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avatarI totally agree with Gordan!!!!!!!

I used to read Timothy Zahn, but some of the expanded Universe authors are fucking awful (*cough Barbara Hambly).  Anyways  the more you bastardize a story, the more you ruin it.  I admit, timothy Zahn is probably the best, but still the concept of an expanded universe is terrible.  It's like have 32000000 gods (no offence to hindu's) but  for a story, its trippy and just a mess. 

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avatarGaming on a Mac Pro

For fear of getting flamed on the posts, ranted against on the podcast, or torched incessantly in TF2, I "game" on a Mac Pro.

Only one game though ... I use CrossOver and play Team Fortress 2 on an original Intel Mac Pro with 9GB RAM.  Even with all my primary apps minimized, I can fire up a game of TF2 with tolerable graphics and take my share of head shots with the rest of the world.

On a Macbook Air, CrossOver didn't work well at all .. and in BootCamp it would just blue-screen after blue-screen.  Probably due to the chipset ... but the Mac Pro handles it decent.

 

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avatarYou guys mention the

You guys mention the possibility of a 64-bit memory addressing cap talking about Nehalem.  Given that 2^64 comes out to 16 exabytes (that's the one above peta, which is the one above tera...)...  I'd say it's going to be a while before that becomes an issue.  Some RAM is lost to overhead stuff (the reason why we see the 32-bit cap at ~3GB-ish rather than the full 4GB), but I'd say we've got quite a ways to go on 64-bit, though.

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avatarMac at a lan party

In your podcast you stated for a brief time that you had never seen a mac at a lan party and that it would be bad news...during a boring day at my dad's house I was browsing lan parties on google and looking through the galleries, I infact saw a total of two Imacs in different lan parties, I was very much surprised to see this and the comments on the pictures shared my surprise. I do not remember the links but I will try to find it again.

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avatarRandom comments.

Tom you made a mistake at the beginning and said it was the 75th podcast.  its 76 man.  For that guy running the Pentium D that wants to upgrade, run CPU-Z or Everest or something and find out what motherboard it is, then search for its compatability and specs.  And ummm, I happen to love the olympics Gordon, because its the only time that the country cares about swimming, which is my big sport.  Cant wait to get a Nehalem machine up and running, its gonna be smokin. 

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avatarCool song

+1 for the Clerks clip.

Also, while I do not do most of my gaming on it, I do game on my G5 iMac.  It plays Diablo II just fine, and I played the recent Penny Arcade game on it.  It's a 1.8GHz G5 20-inch iMac with the stock NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra. 

Apple doesn't make a computer that a gamer would want to buy.  The iMacs are laptops with a big bright monitor and no battery.  Perfect for what I use it for, casual web browsing and my wife and kids main computer.  The Mac Pro is a workstation and not something for play.  I actually don't know who buys these. 

 Finally, Dictionary.com is our friend: meme   –noun

a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes.

[Origin: 1976; < Gk mīmeisthai to imitate, copy; coined by R. Dawkins, Brit. biologist]

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