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  1. Mercutio

    Check out this rendition of phpBB2

    I think it's hideous. And I'm not saying that just because it's not green on black. It reminds me of the failed "modern design" building my Mom worked in during the very early part of the 80s... all red and rounded edges. Simply awful.
  2. Mercutio

    News on the front page, not enough or too much?

    I know that, of course. But seeing that he's in Italy, he probably doesn't get much use for his native language. My posts aren't long enough to complain about? I'm hurt.
  3. Mercutio

    World Cup 2002

    So what was the nature of the dispute with his teammate on the North Melbourne Kanagroos? And given the phrase under consiideration here, I think perhaps we should phrase things delicately.
  4. Mercutio

    World Cup 2002

    No. But I've heard of Wayne Newton and Drew Carey. Are they close?
  5. Mercutio

    News on the front page, not enough or too much?

    I think Ars Technica already has the market cornered on that one. I have a friend who can translate into Gaelic, Welsh, Basque, Portugese, Spanish, Hebrew and (ancient) Greek. PeeWee can probably handle Italian, too. Not that I think that's helpful.
  6. Mercutio

    World Cup 2002

    Sol, while "no holes barred" is a really interesting expression, and the title of a series of movies I'll admit to having enjoyed, I think the phrase you wanted was "No HOLDS barred", a throwback from professional wresting.
  7. Mercutio

    World Cup 2002

    I'd think there woud be more of a space limitation in adding a Hippo or something. Track and field events: Running = rename it "being chased". Runners get a five second head start from, say, a cement truck, which then follows them around the track at whatever speed is most appropriate. Races...
  8. Mercutio

    Barton, SOI... Am I missing something?

    Your English probably sounds like my German. :) You might be amused by the essays of David Sedaris on the subject of become an expatriot in Paris, particularly his digressions on the French-language gender of objects in his life. The literal translations of his attempts at French are bad enough...
  9. Mercutio

    News on the front page, not enough or too much?

    I think it's about right, actually. I don't want you to work too hard at it, but I liked that you got something up about the 800JB DAYS before SR managed it. :)
  10. Mercutio

    New Server for SF.net!

    Yes. And if we win, I'll be available to take local delivery. :) Really, though, this machine is a Sequent-based 2x 4CPU @ 700MHz each. Only 1GB RAM per node (that's NUMA - each quad of CPUs has its own pool of memory. Compare to UMA, what PCs use... memory I/O is probably through the roof)...
  11. Mercutio

    World Cup 2002

    Any sport related to swimming: Just add pirrahna.
  12. Mercutio

    World Cup 2002

    Ballroom dancing: Instead of a nice wood or marble floor, how about either loose gravel or suspended netting? "Travis and Wang are going for the pirouette and... Oh no! Oh the humanity!"
  13. Mercutio

    IBM to exit hard drive biz...

    IBM's enterprise storage is agnostic. Sometimes their bigger equipment (disclaimer: I only work on PC Servers. Ask Fushigi about their i-Series hardware) will have Seagate or Fujitsu drives and sometimes IBM.
  14. Mercutio

    K6-2 450 MHZ AMD: Compatibility problems???

    FIC VA-503+. Marvelous board. I had serious compatibility problems with the Trinity 1598 and normally trouble-free AWE64. Given that was the only board I ever had a problem with the AWE64, I think it's probably Tyan's fault on that one.
  15. Mercutio

    The Sinister Microsoft

    It's there. It's also been in most of their SDKs since the late 90s. I remember seeing it in their "software agent" kit (for making your own talking paper clip) in '98.
  16. Mercutio

    World Cup 2002

    No. I haven't. I really do believe that the only reason people watch sports, on the deepest level, is to watch for injury or injury-substitute activity. Therefore the right thing to do is to return sport to its most pure state, two guys with pointed sticks beating the crap out of each other...
  17. Mercutio

    Migrating from an Tekram DC-390U3W to an Adaptec 29160

    I've found that keeping generic Ghost images + specifying app installs in the batch .INF cuts my fresh install time down to just a half-hour or so.
  18. Mercutio

    World Cup 2002

    The only real sport is women's beach volleyball. Or gymnastics if they'd actually let actual adult women compete instead of little girls. 8) Failing that, the only real sport is actual, gladiatoral combat. Everything else is just some pansy substitute. Baseball would be a lot more interesting...
  19. Mercutio

    The Sinister Microsoft

    The reality of all this is that Microsoft has realized that they just can't compete with Linux without the force of law. Rather than producing better technology than the free-software people can deliver - and with billions of dollars in the bank, I'm making a large and perhaps specious...
  20. Mercutio

    Migrating from an Tekram DC-390U3W to an Adaptec 29160

    I haven't owned a non-adaptec SCSI card in, well, ever, but in the olden days, when hard disks were swapped between brands of cards (SCSI chipsets, nowaday), standard practice was to low-level format the drives from the BIOS of the new card. I don't know whether or not that's still the case.
  21. Mercutio

    My computer is in bad shape

    Well, I've been buying 7500s, mostly. Maybe that's why I wasn't clear. A couple of 7000s and a couple of 7200s, but mostly 7500s. Looking at a 2D display side-by-side, I can't tell a difference between a 7000 and a 7500 @ 1024x768 on a 17" display. Matrox is still the tops as far as 2D, though...
  22. Mercutio

    Tax Day folks! Made out your check yet?

    Suddenly, it's easier to understand why an hour of my time costs $85 - $150 under good circumstances...
  23. Mercutio

    Trouble-free video card

    time, I'd suggest giving a Radeon 7500 a try. It's a good blanace between a gaming card and a good 2D card. Rather like the 3dfx Voodoo3s back in their day (it's an apt comparison. Rad. 7000 = V3 2000, 7200 = V3 3000, 7500 = V3 3500). The fact that the 7x00-series doesn't need active cooling is...
  24. Mercutio

    My computer is in bad shape

    I'd guess you'll do better for your money with a Radeon 7x00 of some form. The lowest-priced versions come in at around $35 (32MB SDR) and easily manage better 2D than any GF2 I've seen and VERY fast 3D as well. Doug, are you sure that the 85Hz you set in your tool is "really" 85Hz? Can you set...
  25. Mercutio

    How many times should I help someone move?

    Damn, that's cold. The last bit, I mean. I've got to go along with Fushigi, though. I've watched professional movers do in hours what it takes me days to do. When I move out of this rat-hole where I live (soon, soon), movers are gonna do all the work.
  26. Mercutio

    Tax Day folks! Made out your check yet?

    Er, that's what I meant. 48% - 53% of my income goes out in taxes. I have pay double for some of the taxes that are normally split between employer and employee. I pay both halves. That's a big part of it right there. I suppose the proper thing to do would be to incorporate and pay myself a salary.
  27. Mercutio

    Tax Day folks! Made out your check yet?

    Taxes, bane of the self-employed. Last year was a really awful year for me, and only 48% of my income wound up being taxed. Most years it's more like 53 or 54%, depending on how sneaky my accountant feels like being and how nice people are about paying me in cash (saints, every one)...
  28. Mercutio

    Trouble-free video card

    The other side of that is, for vendors who do use nvidia cards, the M64 is a perfectly acceptable low-cost part. At 8- or 16MB, it fits the bill for "budget" video card just fine, and if you're thinking like one of those misguided folks, the fact that they can do some amount of 3D is just gravy...
  29. Mercutio

    My computer is in bad shape

    Tannin, the question is, are you selling 70% nvidia cards out of some confidence in the product, because of market or competitive demands, or because of cost concerns?
  30. Mercutio

    My computer is in bad shape

    This is one of those "is it plugged in right?" questions: Does your display look acceptable without the 3rd party tool at either 75Hz, if you can stand it, or a refresh higher than 85Hz? I've found that when there's a sync problem with a display like that, often fiddling with the refresh rates...
  31. Mercutio

    Trouble-free video card

    Even from a "modern" standpoint, the "old" 3dfx cards function fully and properly in Windows XP as 2D devices and even as DirectX accelerators (I tried Unreal Tournament on a Voodoo5 during the time I had XP on one machine. It worked just fine @ around 40fps in 1024x768 using DirectX for in-game...
  32. Mercutio

    Trouble-free video card

    This one's for the builders and integrators among us: I'm sure we all have different experiences with computer hardware. What I'd like to see is a rough ranking of which video cards (by chipset, not brand, for the 50-billion S3s and nvidia cards out there) that seem the least "fussy" - the most...
  33. Mercutio

    My computer is in bad shape

    Didn't Doug say that he didn't start having major problems until he tried using a 3rd party tool to clean his registry? The whole concept of "third party" is "not the people who are directly involved in whatever". Or to put it another way, perhaps Doug should not have been surprised at the...
  34. Mercutio

    My computer is in bad shape

    Epox has a really nice KT266A board, and I have nothing but good things to say about Gigabyte's higher-end KT333. I finally got around to using a Soltek KT266A board last month, but it left my possession almost as soon as I got it. Trouble-free and a decent connector layout (not as sensible as...
  35. Mercutio

    My computer is in bad shape

    Where is Skallas these days?
  36. Mercutio

    My computer is in bad shape

    Well, "Load BIOS Defaults" is always a good guess. Your board is probably new enough that you can't toggle ACPI off, but if you can, do it. Load XP with just your video card install. Pull your sound and NIC for now, disable USB and onboard RAID, if you have those. See if that works.
  37. Mercutio

    How many times should I help someone move?

    There's a Valparaiso, Indiana, about 15 miles from where I live. So did Tannin look at a map of Northwest Indiana, or was he simply referring to the city in Chile? Either way it's funny.
  38. Mercutio

    GeForce 3 Ti 200: NOT a bad performer!

    Come toward the light! What is it that's giving you lousy frame rates? What's a "lousy framerate"? My experience with the 7000-series cards has been excellent in 98 and 2000.
  39. Mercutio

    How many times should I help someone move?

    I feel OK describing what this guy is doing as "using" me (moreso than Amy, who weighs all of 95lbs. and despite amazing spatial abilities, isn't much help in actually moving furniture). That's the case I tried to make to her, too. Now it's a debate. She helped - he's family to her, even...
  40. Mercutio

    How many times should I help someone move?

    Today I refused help my fiance's uncle move to a new apartment. My reasoning: In three years, I've helped him move four times. Today would've been the fifth. Unless he's moving, I never see the guy. He didn't help when Amy and I moved into my apartment. Didn't even offer. He's a high school...
  41. Mercutio

    OT: Apology to China

    Shown in the US on BBC America, if you're lucky enough to get that station.
  42. Mercutio

    WTB: Semi-functional hard disks

    Thanks for any offers. I'll see how many I need, but I'd like drives that really do have obvious faults (lots of bad sectors, enough so that the firmware can't remap 'em all, or really nasty-sounding drives). The idea is to put them in front of people and diagnose the drives as having problems...
  43. Mercutio

    I'm working on something new...

    Nice to see that you maintained the proper sequence of attrib options as well (-r -a -s -h). Rather than Windows - so as not to show a bias, why not something simpler, like the output from running an old-fashioned config.sys or autoexec.bat? Or we could go all the way c:\windows\attrib -r...
  44. Mercutio

    I'm working on something new...

    The bottom one is freakin' cool. ;)
  45. Mercutio

    WTB: Semi-functional hard disks

    Anyone have an old hard drive laying around that's not in usable condition but sorta still works? Bad sectors, scary hard disk noises, visible arcing on the board when powering up, only spins up half the time... whatever. I'd like to buy disks like that for classroom demonstration purposes...
  46. Mercutio

    OT: Apology to China

    I guess I'm the last holdout on the emoticons front, too. I really dislike the graphical smiley-faces used here and elsewhere. Typing a ":" and a ")" is too much work? I have no idea what some of those annoying yellow symbols are supposed to mean, but :D :P ;) and :( are all pretty easy to...
  47. Mercutio

    100 Posts per page?

    Does that mean I win? :)
  48. Mercutio

    Somebody misbehave!

    A little background: In '98 or '99, on a visit to Europe, a Dutch anarchist/performance artist whose schtick happens to be throwing cream pies at important people managed to nail Mr. Bill right in the kisser. There is a tiny bit of video footage out there of him cleaning off his face (which I...
  49. Mercutio

    100 Posts per page?

    I, the slow connection guy, voted for unlimited. Why? Because I'd rather view a thread in its entirety than just the most recent X commencts. I'd rather minimize the number of pages I have to load than the amount of data I have to download on a discussion site like SF.
  50. Mercutio

    I'm working on something new...

    Ars has a black background, but the text is white, and the trim is orange. Only their logo is vaguely tasteful. Ars original site design, which IIRC was blue and white on black, was actually much nicer. I just remember the joy of my hercules-graphics display (green on greenish-black), and think...
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