Posted 11/20/2009 at 02:21:14am

I can't believe people are surprised by the fact that apple would sell a product for twice what its worth. But the press around this thing just goes to prove a point most of us have been making for a long time. All the apple fanaticism really has nothing to do with the product its self. Apple could sell a dog turd and people would run out and buy it and tell all of their friends how apple revolutionized the dog turd industry and that they are all idiots for not owning one. Apple loving morons are lining up right now to put down however much its going to cost to own this thing with no idea what it even does. Hell, apple denies it exists. It just goes to show, the consumer as a whole is an idiot and just shops the brand, not the product. Maybe they will be interested in this revolutionary new product:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA

Posted 11/20/2009 at 12:26:03am

If you use neon lights inside your case the white fans might actually be pretty nice. Against the all black interior of the case the fans motion would really stand out, and under the neon lights they would not apear white, but instead they would be whatever color your lighting scheme is. But even without lighting I would take white over that hideous brown that noctua uses any day.

Posted 11/20/2009 at 12:04:45am

This is speculation of the worst type. This is basically the "If you build it, they will come." Theory. What the article is trying to tell you is, If we spend enough money on high end pc components, then the gaming industry will reward us with great games. You and I both know that this is a bunch of BS. The gaming industry doesn't care how much the world is spending on computer parts, they care about the bottom line. And the bottom line folks, is "How much money can I make with the least amount of effort?"

We used to have a split in the gaming industry. There were primarily console game designers, and there were pc game designers. Occasionally there would be a port from one platform to the other, and companies like EA played both sides of the field. But the PC designers made cutting edge games for PC, and console designers worked to push the current console tech as hard as they could. Somewhere between the xbox and ps3 PC game designers said "why do we work twice as hard on our games and make a quarter of the money off of them?" They realized what a cash cow they were missing out on. And they stopped designing PC games. They started designing console games that you can play on PC. As the cash came rolling in they have slowly gotten less and less interested in the pc side of things. As long as they get the console titles out there the money flows, they will finish the pc version when they get around to it.

I hate to say it, but I don't see this changing any time soon. For us, gaming is entertainment, its a passion. For the creators, its business. And in business money talks. So don't think for a second that just because we are spending more money on pc components that its going to turn the pc gaming industry around. The only thing that will do that is console makers waiting too long to bring out the next new system, or a revolutionary game designer to prove that money can be made in PC gaming outside the world of MMOs and subscription services. Maybe then  then games will be designed for pc THEN dumbed down and ported to consoles instead of the other way around. But until then, it will always be easier to make a game with performance to match a console and port it to a more powerful system than it would be to make it for a pc and port it to a less powerful system.

Posted 11/19/2009 at 11:34:11pm

What Del Rizzo is saying is one thing, but what he is thinking is another. What he is thinking is, "Good lord, how the hell am I supposed to sell product while our CEO is alienating our primary customer base on a daily basis? I better pucker up and kiss some serious ass or I'll be standing in an unemployment line after being the fall guy for dwindling video card sales."

Posted 11/19/2009 at 11:28:42pm

It's my understanding that in a few months when the shelves are full of radeon 5000 series cards, fermi will still be nowhere to be seen. Does anyone know the estimated arrival date of fermi?

Posted 11/19/2009 at 11:13:51pm

I was a long time IE user. I've always been the "If it's not broken, don't fix it." type when it comes to software so I really saw no reason to use a different browser than the one I was used to. When websites started requiring flash 10 I was forced to install firefox at work. I haven't looked back since.

What do people love about it so much? I can only speak for myself, but for me its the little things. There are so many little tricks and features that just.... work the way you think they should work. If you want real examples: If you see a hyperlink typed out but there is no actual link to click on, highlight it, then click and drag the text up to the address window. But say you wanted it in a new tab, instead of the address window, just drag it up to where the tabs are and drop it there. Want to rearrange your tabs? Just click and drag the tab where you want it on the list. Maybe you decide you didn't want it in a tab after all, you wanted it in a new window. Thats easy enough, just click the tab and drag it out of the browser window, TADA it opens in a new window. Change your mind again? Drag the tab from the new window back to the tab bar of the old window and it puts it right back. Its amazing, and amazingly simple. You can even highlight text and drag it to the search window instead of having to open up a new google tab and type it in. Then there are things like automatic spell checking, things that should have been a part of IE a long time ago but weren't. And finally ADD-ONs! 

I didn't think I would get into the add-ons much, but there are some that I just couldn't live without. My three most used are Lazarus: Form Recovery, NetVideoHunter, and IE tab. Lazarus is invaluable. I don't know how many times I have started filling out a long form, got called away from my desk, then come back and finish only to hit submit and see that my session timed out. I hit the back button and all my information is gone. With lazarus I just right click and hit recover text and it all comes back. Its wonderful. NetVideoHunter is a small icon at the bottom of the browser, it remembers all of the videos you have viewed during your browsing session. You can click it and choose any video that you have watched and it will download it to your hard drive. It works for all major sites including youtube and hulu. It makes capturing those funny youtube videos that you don't want to lose a snap. And it lets you capture your favorite tv episodes right off of hulu so you can view them later on your ipod, zune, phone, or what have you. Finally IE tab is just that. It lets you open web pages in a new tab that emulates internet explorer. It's great for web pages that just aren't made to work with firefox. Just open them in an IE tab and you are good to go.

 Sorry for the wall of text, but for anyone wondering what is so great about firefox, I say to try it for a solid week, it will be hard to give up.

Posted 11/19/2009 at 12:08:40am

Don't worry, you will be just fine. Until the playstation 4 or xbox 720 comes out your machine will run every game that is made. Since there is no money in making computer games these days those high powered graphics cards do nothing but inflate our Epeens with ridiculous frame-rates.

Posted 11/18/2009 at 11:44:00pm

There is no expectation of privacy when you post something on a public forum. Anonymous posting just means that your name is not included in the post. It doesn't mean your transaction does not get logged. I'll bet every single person here who has ever run a blog or message board wished they could have done this same thing at some point in time to some troll. Nothing annoys me more than deleting a post or locking a thread on a forum only to  have the offending individual repost his comment or open a new thread. Usually doing so on a forum gets your IP banned. My guess is he checked the IP so he could ban it, decided to take a peek and see where it was coming from (maybe it was a friend messing with him.) When he saw it was from a school he probably thought he would get a little retribution and tip off their IT guys. Did he intend to get the guy fired? Probably not. Did he go too far? Probably. Did the guy deserve to lose his job over it? Probably not. Am I happy that some anonymous forum troll got dealt with for once? Hell yes!

Posted 11/18/2009 at 11:27:25pm

If you have nothing better to do than comment on some bloggers photoshop work, I would consider that in its self failure.

Posted 11/18/2009 at 12:45:22am

Damn you guys! I budgeted $400 for a graphics card in my new build. It hurt to budget that much but I am running 3 displays and wanted maximum performance. Now I have rethink it. $600 is a whole lot of moolah for a graphics card..... bad damn is it sweet.