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You might want to give us a budget to work off of.Flight simulators are demanding games, so you may not find the performance you're looking for in a cheaper laptop. Desktops would be the way to go if you want to sacrifice portability, as you can hike up performance specifications without suffering as much of a blow to your wallet as a potential laptop purchase would do.Have a budget, see what the RECOMMENDED requirements for the game are, and then give us some guidelines. As for brands, I've gone with HP and Dell so far... no real qualms with either company as of yet. (I've owned a Dell Inspiron 8600 and currently have an HP Pavilion zd8000 and an HP tc1100 tablet PC.)

Unless your body works miracles, you're pretty screwed.Follow the advice of increasing a rep occasionally, and of course push your limits. The problem with that approach is that you achieve muscle failure, which is good in increasing the amount of reps you will be able to do, but also leave you very sore the next day.And muscle failure doesn't mean when you decide to give up. Muscle failure is when you PHYSICALLY cannot get up. Good luck.

A lot of people don't even know I wear contact lenses.I started wearing glasses way back in the days of elementary school. I hated them. They made me look dorky and nerdy but I was very much blind without them.In sophomore year of high school I made my advent with contact lenses. It was a step, especially with getting used to the routine of putting them in and taking them out, not to mention the eye-painful and frustrating hassles that you have with contact lenses from time to time. I still wear them to this day, prefering them to wearing glasses.I don't like glasses now not because of the dorky look (because people can actually look cuter, smarter, more chic, etc. with the right frames), but because of the fact that they fog up, and if you're stuck with a pair that doesn't fit you (military-issued "civilian" pair), they like to slide down your nose, you can break them, you can lose them, you can scratch them... the problems can be quite astounding and a bear to deal with. But then again, with contacts you HAVE to have saline solution, take them out and put them in often, and of course, buy lenses, which can add up to quite a bit in comparison to what you can get out of a pair of glasses... assuming your prescription doesn't change and you don't lose or break them.I think it's still a great thing to actually have both on hand, considering that I would like to be able to swap to glasses when I'm at home and not out and about trying to impress people with my mad-good looks. I've formed a bad habit of sleeping with my contacts in and it's not a good thing to be doing, but I still do it. Stupid, but when I go blind because of it, I have no one to blame but myself and my laziness.A lot of people that I know find it very iffy to even be touching the eye when putting in a contact lens, but I can actually do it naturally now. Just as long as I have saline solution (and sometimes not even), I can pop in my contacts anywhere at any time. But glasses win as far as simply slipping the pair on without much hassle.Hopefully in the future, I will have a good opportunity for LASIK just so I won't ever have to deal with it again.Edit: As far as LASIK goes, my dad had it done and he says that your eyes will feel wicked dry and even gritty at times. The surgery is done in stages and not all in one shot. The dry and gritty feeling is ameliorated by drops that your optometrist will provide you, which you will probably need to use for months up to a year after surgery is complete. The typical cost for laser eye surgery is $2000-$2500 (for both eyes, I believe), but if you're in the military, see about getting it for free by asking the optometry branch about what your options may be. (Combat arms branches always have priority, of course.)

You know, it's kind of scary knowing that there was a movie done that featured this same thing, except it was just one papparazzi car and something bad happened. (I won't spoil it for you guys.) If you guys are interested, check Papparazzi out. Despite the peer reviews, I thought it was worth a look.

This was probably the most civilized online multi-perspective argument I have ever read. As for this squabble between respected members/staff/people I actually recognize on Xisto, I'd like to bring up the "high horse" statement. Drop it, considering the fact that everyone, including me, can actually read through this and possibly make up false judgment over an elementary argument. Bad mojo to the regulars, if you'd ask me. I believe that anyone, moderator or mere member, has the right to post replies and make up threads when and if they wish, as we all collectively make up the Xisto "community." You can't just moderate... everyone's human. And keep in mind that the typed word is much different than the spoken word, so anything from anyone can seem snide, catty, rude, prudish, or what-have-you. This is why I reserve my more sarcastic moments with people that actually know me well enough not to take offense or find anything wrong in what I say online... or even in real life. I like the suggestion of foot-noting uncommon words to help with the reader, but it falls under two faults: a) the reader may feel belittled by the poster as apparently his or her vocabulary is seemingly "inferior" (there was a word for it that keeps slipping my mind... I'll edit and post later if I think about it), and posters shouldn't have to add footnotes to each and every one of their posts that may contain terms that may be unfamiliar to any possible audience. If you view any threads, you are probably either interested or knowledgeable in the field of discussion, so why not conduct a simple online search for its definition? I use dictionary.com with no shame... well, almost. Another suggestion is to have some sort of way to denote native English speakers from the inhabitants of foreign countries, in which we can see if someone is just being lazy or even purposefully deviant when we see incorrect spelling, typos, etc. Problem with this is that people will feel segregated in the way that they will be "tagged," so to speak. Then again, there are people from foreign countries that speak BETTER than their native English speaker counterparts. And yet another suggestion is to clean up posts, but no sane person would want to correct each and every post. If I can fathom, being a moderator on Xisto is not a paid job. However, I think the current thing that we have going - correcting posts and issuing warnings or notes - will work well, considering the fact that you make contact with an individual, let them know what's up, and if that person has a legitimate language issue, you can go back to the whole "ESL tag" suggestion I mentioned earlier. I am a wicked grammar Nazi online and it almost drives me nuts to see typos and "txt tlk" galore, as it publishes intended ignorance which does lead to degraded English in the long run (since you'd be so used to typing that way). I hate knowing that some of my friends do the same thing and then ask me to proof-read their college works and whatnot, riddled with even common mistakes like the infamous you're-your problem. Edit: The stupid word that I couldn't think of was "condescending."

It's so easy to get caught up in lying online, since you're behind a screen and a keyboard.However, for the most part, it doesn't matter to me when I do tell the truth.(For instance, I really am from New Durham, NH. Good luck finding me though... not like anyone would actually WANT to. Then again, I might be lying about that... )I think to some extent that lying on the Internet is okay, since everyone is privileged to passively-defend themselves from identity theft, blackmail, or even just appearance (to prevent being misjudged). For instance, I deem most younger kids as ignorant and even very immature online, but there are a few kids that I almost respect for their maturity. I don't think I have to get into massively-incorrect spelling and "txt tlk." I for the most part tell the truth about myself, except when signing up for sites that you have to register for before imploring on their services, viewing their forums, etc. I almost wish that every forum could let guests view them and not have to register for them every time... (I even have an e-mail address dedicated for signing up for stuff, as I don't care about what spam I get there. I'm sure most people already do this nowadays.)

Very true. However, the Wii wasn't geared towards serious gamers. If you couldn't tell from Nintendo's focus and the fact that the Wii hardware boasts a mere 480p/480i/576i... well, it pales in comparison to the high-definition gaming you would get from the 360 and the PS3. Every console has its garbage games. Take the Xbox for instance with the stupid Burger King games. C'mon... seriously? I'm not a huge gamer, really, so I can't think of any really crappy games for the other consoles... I've never even heard of WiiFit either. From my point of view, there are only a handful of games for each console that are gems compared to the rest. Titles that I can think off the top of my head include Resistance: Fall of Man (PS3), Gears of War (360), Killzone 2 (PS3), Metal Gear Solid 4 (PS3), Halo 3 (360), Mass Effect (360), Call of Duty 4 (360), Super Mario Galaxy (Wii), Super Paper Mario (Wii), and Rayman (Wii). (That list doesn't include everything... like I said, I'm not a real enthusiast when it comes to keeping on top of the latest games.) Really, each console shouldn't have just a limited handful of games to choose from, but the reality is that there's only a handful of good picks out of the crap that comes out for each console. And of course, the title preferences will be subjective to the audience it caters to. You and I would probably frown on the idea of Pirates of the Carribean or Happy Feet as a game, but I'm sure that a younger audience is already loving the swash-buckling and the... adventure (?) of penguins. Microsoft has been pretty good with the whole RRoD issue, sending out replacement units and sort of keeping customers happy with the support side of owning the 360. Although I highly am against having to expect failure of a console and keeping yourself from enjoying your 360 because of it (and later the month that you will be without a 360), they do reciprocate a bit with a free 1-month Gold trial of Xbox Live (to sucker you in, I'm sure). I hear the Elite variants don't have any failure problems...

Kudos to Wanton Rhapsody for that really-long explanation on how hypocritical we can be at times. I really liked how you compared ordinary mementos like pictures, heirlooms, and whatnot to the Lifegem.I still think that the Lifegem is a rather exorbitant purchase, especially if you still have to come up with the dough to bury some of the remains, the casket, etc. On the family's end, I think that it would be okay to keep someone's ashes as a Lifegem. What's it matter? In all practicality, they're dead. Unless it was in a dying wish or will, I don't think they'd mind just as long as you don't do anything absurdly disrespectful (and that's really just on your conscience).Personally, I don't care what my family does with my body. As long as it doesn't cost them a fortune to get rid of me, I'll be fine with that. (Although having my ashes spread around the world would be kind of neat, plus it would give someone an excuse for a road trip.)

Out of the original cast, I liked Ryu/Ken, Chun Li, and Guile.They were easy to use for moves, fast, and personally, combos were very easy to pull off. The moves weren't horrifically complicated either... but then again, I'm talking about Street Fighter 2 for the SNES.

Wow. Just... wow. Japan comes up with the strangest things. Innovative, but at the same time bizarre. Guess we can finally avoid our stereotypical squint now. But seriously, that's just weird.

Peer to peer programs are running rampant with malware. I use uTorrent just because I hear horror stories about Limewire, Kazaa, Morpheus, and all the other common P2P programs out there. Torrents are so much better simply because you are continuously downloading through more than one source, and the torrent community is more of a friendlier environment as people leave comments on torrents, seed and share, and even if you're a leech, you HAVE to seed some of what you have while you download.Plus, you can find just about ANYTHING.

I think the site looks pretty darn good, to tell the truth. It's got a nice clean look, a personal touch, and the coding is pretty clean. Good job.Of course, the suggestions come in here. Saint Michael is complaining about the white being too white because he's old. But maybe you should lighten up the background crimson color, since the contrast is probably making your white seem even brighter, which might make looking at your site kind of painful once someone strains a retina. As mentioned, the image map is cool, but I recommend that you slice up that image into chunks and link the images as separate entities, placing them into DIVs, (the Home image to your index, etc.), then arrange them by positioning their DIVs. That way, if you want to change the navigation at all, you can simply edit one pic instead of the whole thing, then having to redo your image map coordinates.Cell padding would be good for your text too, since it's too close to the borders of your content portion. Of course, this has already been addressed.Take your own lesson to heart and use CSS to style up that text area, too.I think you should put up more content then let us know to check back to see how everything comes up. We'll worry about aesthetics moreso; you just try to satisfy your audience and put up more content. Also, IE6 shows it different than FF2 (2.0.0.11), but not by much difference. I'm viewing this on a 1440x900 monitor too.Good job so far, dude. Keep it up.

A lot of those comments were pretty funny. Plasma doesn't really excite me a heck of a lot anymore. I've seen LCD HDTVs that are much cheaper and very close to if not on par with actually-comparable visual quality. DLP is starting to look pretty good too.

I don't know how many times I've actually explained how the 360 and the PS3 are close to or on par with graphics and performance, but to summarize: They're very much the same. If you don't believe me, look up their hardware specifications, to include their processors and GPUs.If you want innovative gameplay, go with the Wii. It also boasts Internet browsing, several applications guised as Wii Channels, and absolutely good fun times. It's suitable for just about all ages with anyone, and it isn't very hard to pick up. The Virtual Console makes it "backwards-compatible" with most older titles as you can play anything from the original Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Sega Saturn, Sega Genesis, TurboGrafx16, and a handful of other past consoles, as well as play GameCube CDs. The Wii also features wireless Internet access with a home network. The console bundle itself is cheap at $250, and in my opinion, out of the three next-gen consoles, the Wii is a winner. Good luck finding one though; I'm not the only person that's realized this. My next pick would have to be the Xbox 360. It is a multifunctional platform, able to perform as a music player, video player, as well as a gaming console. Backwards-compatibility with most popular Xbox titles is a good thing. Microsoft features the optional HD-DVD player with the 360, and of course sports high definition output for it and its games (unlike the Wii, which is stuck with 420p). You can stream media from your PC to the 360 via your home network, although you must purchase a wireless adapter if you want to do this wirelessly. With the 360, you can get onto the Xbox Live online gaming community. Due to a design flaw, the first couple of batches of the 360 were prone to the infamous "red ring of death," which indicated a hardware failure, but future batches shouldn't have a problem, not to mention that Microsoft is pretty good with replacement units should you experience this. At $350 with the recent price drop, this isn't a bad buy.What is a bad buy is the PS3, in my opinion. I personally have not followed much on the PS3 and only would like to play a few games exclusively for the title (such as Killzone 2, Resistance: Fall of Man, etc.). The graphics are great, but close to or on par with the 360. It features a Blu-Ray player as a standard and has high definition outputs for its games and Blu-Ray movies. The first batches may have problems with hardware failures but had backwards-compatibility with older PS2 (and I believe PSX) games; the newer batches are cheaper and more stable but remove backwards-compatibility capability. The SIXAXIS controllers are rather neat with motion-sensing as well as sticking to the traditional Playstation controller design. But at $500-600, this should only be looked at if you want a cheap Blu-Ray player or if you have the cash to burn.If someone would like to shed some unbiased light on the PS3, feel free to do so, as I haven't even looked at the console since its introduction.

To relate to the topic subject, how does one find his or her posts that he or she replied to or even started (especially when the search engine spits out hundreds of results that aren't even relevant to your search)? The four most current ones are shown in your profile, but what if you replied to a whole bunch and Xisto gets a flow of new topics in the recent activity section?

The question is elementary, as we all know that all those feared black hat hackers would go to town on the opportunity of being able to access a PC remotely, but could someone really do something with an IP address?Most people have a router with a firewall enabled, which deters most potential attacks, but even then, the IP address you may receive most likely points to the ISP that the person uses, since the ISP location itself assigns an IP address to the household.So am I correct in assuming that in order to attain a particular machine's IP address, you would have to get the IP address of the ISP, then get the IP address that the ISP assigns that person, then get the home IP address if the person has a router?And even if you could accomplish that, what could you do with that IP address? Could you connect to someone's PC as a remote computer on the network if it was unsecured, viewing files and the like? Obviously, you could sneak in malicious programs and the like...Also, how does a Trojan make things easier in creating that "backdoor?" Does it automatically establish a direct connection to the attacking computer should the attacking computer exploit it?

Yes, it's worth it.For $250, you get a console system that's fun to play by yourself and if you're willing to throw in another $250 or so, great memories can be had with up to four players with games like Wii Sports, Mario Party 8, and my personal favorite: Rayman: Raving Rabbids.It's great with all ages, from kids to older folk alike. If they're not much of a gamer, it's always nice to give it a try. I got my parents to play with it and they don't even play console games. The console itself is rather easy to learn and very natural, in a way, since you're using movement instead of trying to memorize buttons, combos, and ways to do things. It's rather intuitive and simple at the same time, really.I haven't met anyone I know that has one that is actually disappointed, unless they are THAT appreciative of the eye candy that the 360 and the PS3 puts out. I like my eye candy as well, but overall fun trumps beautiful graphics.

I have the Motorola i580. Outstanding phone as far as I'm concerned. The only complaints I have with this phone is that the Bluetooth 1.1 is too slow... but I rarely if ever actually do data transfers wirelessly. Also, apparently the outer LCD is prone to failing after some intentional throwing of the phone against a brick wall and demonstrational dropping. The bugger is quite strong, as proven by stress tests to push what this thing can go through. I can't remember the web site, but someone put this thing through freezing temps, hot temps, burying it, dropping it from a two story building, and even running it over with a truck. And of course, one of my buddies accidentally ran this thing over with a HMMWV with it open... and expectedly, the hinge on it broke, but the darn thing still works! (I'm sure he'll be swapping that phone out anyway. ) Heck, I'm not one to drop my phone often if at all. But knowing that I can actually put my weight on this thing without worrying about it snapping, breaking, or whatever is already great, unlike the "candy" phones that are out that are slim, sleek, fashionable, expensive, and FRAGILE.

Personally, I think that most Trojan horses are designed well enough to replicate themselves and keep from getting removed by most anti-viruses. It's a pain, but whenever a friend of mine gets infected, I simply back everything up, wipe the drive clean, then reinstall everything. It's a sure way of getting whatever is ailing your system. I don't trust antiviruses to be able to remove every bit of malware from any system, not to mention that Windows won't grant read/write access to any programs (including deleting) if the file is in use. Kind of stupid how you want to remove something that IS doing something malicious, but Windows won't let you because it's busy doing just that. As for processes, Google is awesome at helping you find out what's what. It comes through experience finding out off the bat what processes are essential and non-essential when looking at the Task Manager. To figure out some of them easily, run services.msc and when you double-click on a process, it will show you what the executable is that shows up in the Processes tab (and you will also find out why there are multiple instances of svchost.exe which always confused me back in the day). Also, if you Google for Windows services you should get multiple sites that will explain and even tell you if a process is essential to keeping Windows running normally.

I looked into this a little more, and this apparently is old news brought into new light. The spoofing bug made an appearance back in the day in the way of code injection, as I guessed. You can see if it works on your browser here, thanks to Secunia. However, I'm not sure yet if it actually is done in the same manner in this re-appearance. The easiest way to keep yourself protected, if this was the case, is by not entering any information at all until they make a patch. Since that's not going to happen, fall back on your AutoComplete bank of user names and passwords that you were too lazy to type out before. And if you don't have AutoComplete enabled, then I suggest that you not enter any data into a website that opened up in a new window or frame, or only have one site open at a time, since the script needs to exist in one spot in order to inject it into another website opened in another window, which possibly could be named and easily targeted. I'll post more information as I come upon it. - Edit: The video of the exploit in action can be viewed here. Problem is that there's no sound to narrate you on what's going on... and this just looks painfully-obvious, thanks to the frequency of form-based credential input as opposed to the pop-up dialog. And of course, still obvious if you open up a new window to log in. When in doubt, don't log in. And also, you would have to access your trusted site from an untrusted source, wouldn't you? Otherwise, they can't load their redirection script. And if you did fall for it, just change your password. Hopefully you didn't leave any other more confidential or sensitive information with that misstep. - Edit Edit: Aviv Raff's advisory. Basically showing how obvious this is and advice on avoiding it... which you already read here.

That's crap if people will actually have to purchase new cards that support the full potential of Dx10.1. Personally, I'd be pissed myself if I bought an NVIDIA 8800GT (over $300), or even two of them like our SLI-enthusiasts, only to find out later that the next release of DirectX won't mean any changes BECAUSE of my hardware. I don't see why they can't just do what they've been doing like with Dx7, Dx8, and Dx9, which were all supported without the need to purchase new hardware to exploit the upgrades.

Welcome to Xisto, FlameX.Part of the rules of this forum is to put content that you snagged from another website in quote tags. You might want to go through the rules real quick. As for the HDX, I saw this sucker on CNet before and it's a heavy beast, not to mention a great portable media center. But at a starting price of $2000? Yikes.Then again, my HP zd8000 on release was near $1600, and that was last year for a 3.2GHz Pentium 4, 80GB HD, 1GB RAM, 256MB ATI Radeon Mobility X600 laptop with a 17" widescreen. I'd recommend the HDX to people who would appreciate a portable media station, because that's what this thing really is. If you absolutely needed the capabilities of a desktop without the bulk, the HDX would be a good choice.It's crazy that this even mentions the tx1100, which I have not seen anything related yet. However, I also have a tablet PC by HP (the tc1100) and it's funny how they mention the same types of laptops that I own in one article. (The HP tc1100 cost me $700 from an eBay vendor.) It looks like a full-sized laptop though... but only weighing in at 4.3 lbs, compared to my tc1100 at 4 lbs.If it's anything like my tc1100, I would recommend that you picked this out as an actually-portable mini-computer that you could take out on the road, your travels, or even tote around within the home for Internet access at arms reach. Although it's not exactly in the class of a UMPC (ultra-mobile PC), it's pretty darn good.

Haha... this is the first instance of actual exploitation of FireFox that I've ever heard of.I was expecting this. Unfortunately. So from what I understand, this is a more advanced version of a phishing scheme where the link pulls the actual login page of the trusted site? Wouldn't you be able to see where it actually goes if you viewed the source? Does the exploit allow injection of code to specify where the destination of the receiving server is on the fly? I'm sort of confused as to how oblivious we can be to it. (I'm assuming that you can't just look at the address bar anymore.)

I laughed as I was reading that whole thing. I love KFC mash potatoes and gravy, Mickey D's fries and some of their sandwiches, and some other fast food items.I know about horror stories, but maggots in my popcorn chicken takes the cake.

It's pretty crazy what we take for granted.I still sort of do with my vision.I wear contacts now since I don't like having to wear glasses or the fact that I have to worry about breaking them, having them fog up, etc. But of course, with contacts comes a whole different portion of responsibility. And more often than I should, I sleep with my contacts in at night and don't take the "proper" techniques in putting in my contacts, taking care of them, etc. The last optometrist I saw told me a whole bunch of stuff about people doing the same thing and then eventually losing their eyesight and such. I don't think I'm the only person to be doing what I'm doing, and I haven't heard of any horror stories of people with contacts, so my cynical nature told me that he was trying to get me to use my contacts for the duration that they were made for and to only buy from them (as he said that 1-800-CONTACTS was shady or something like that, even though they are cheaper).Anyone else sleep in with their contacts and/or wear 2-week lenses for over two weeks and/or anything else that optometrists generally advise against doing?