rayzoredge

I think that pasta is rather easy to make... and if you like seafood, you'll like making this up. What you need:1 package of linguine1 can of baby clams (cooked, in water)1 package of baby shrimp (cooked, frozen)1 package of mussels (cooked, frozen)1 can/container of spaghetti saucesaucepanpotwooden spooncolanders (optional)1.) Defrost and drain the water from the shrimp and clams. Put your desired amount of spaghetti sauce, clams, and shrimp into a saucepan. Heat and simmer on medium heat.2.) Defrost and prepare the frozen mussels according to the package.3.) Heat a generous amount of water. Add salt, if desired. When water comes to a boil, add the linguine. Cook for precisely 9 minutes, or however you like your pasta. (I hear that it's good when you can throw a strand against a wall and it sticks.) Remove from heat when the pasta is done.4.) Place serving of linguine on a plate; top with sauce; and serve mussels on the side.Those would be the three things you will need to do in order to make enough pasta for four generous servings. It's very easy to make, unless you want to get creative and make your own sauce or prepare your seafood beforehand.I personally use the Chunky variety of Ragu... something like a garden blend. Of course, you can use whatever you'd like.Mmm...Now I'm hungry.

Fuzzy picture is fuzzy.

It's REALLY hard to tell what it could be... and I was just going to start narrowing it down starting from where you lived, but you didn't specify a location in your profile.

Check this Wiki article out. Maybe it can be of some help.

I think I forgot to put in my standpoint too... I am up for *person*- and bi-sexuality. People should live the way they want to live without directly intruding, harming, and/or inconveniencing others... and if you say that same-sex relationships are wrong because of your beliefs or that it disturbs you, that's just stupid. It's your opinion, which is fine and dandy, and I'll respect that, but when people take measures to push that sort of opinion to oppress and/or harass *person*- and bi-sexual people simply because they aren't "of the norm"... whatever that is...I'm sure you know where I'm going with this.Live and let live.

I didn't go with an iPod for several reasons.1.) It looks like a toy. But looks are subjective.2.) The Creative Zen Vision: M 60GB trumps the iPod equivalent by a 256,000-color display over the iPod's 16,000-color display, supports more playable media formats, and some other stuff. (Yep... I did my homework.)3.) I didn't want to get one because everyone else has an iPod. (Now I'm unique... just like everybody else!)4.) The iPod feels fragile. And I don't mean just the screen... all PVPs have screens that just love getting scratched. I feel like if I ever had one in my back pocket and accidentally sat on it that it would snap.5.) Not sure about this one, but I haven't heard of anyone who uses an iPod without iTunes. (I like being able to access my Zen as another hard disk so I can avoid installing crappy software.)Why I would want an iPod:1.) Apparently whenever you break one or when it fails on you, you can basically trade it in for a new one.2.) I can become part of the Apple elitist group. Oh wait... that's not something I want... I read about the Zune and the first generation batch didn't appeal to me at all, after reading some peer reviews. Things like how you can't wirelessly-interact with your PC (even though it's able to do this with other Zunes... so it doesn't seem to make any sense why not), the restrictive supported media formats, the fact that it's a Microsoft product... Really, to each his/her own.

I recommend that you use MagicDisc.I've tried DaemonTools before and it doesn't support some files that MagicDisc does. MD opens up files with a .daa extension.

I didn't think that Bluetooth supported peer-to-peer connections as far as computers linking up together onto a "network."Isn't Bluetooth really just a device-to-device, limited to functions provided by the profiles that imbibe mentioned? I don't think that Bluetooth can support an actual network like WiFi 802.11a/b/g/n can... especially with a hypothetical maximum of 2.1MB/s. (It's just not practical...)

I've rediscovered how to find my own posts and topics. I've killed Dr. Watson from ever starting... and for some reason (knock on wood), the Explorer crashing doesn't happen.(For those of you who are curious, you can disable the bugger from within the registry - which I wouldn't touch - or just running drwtsn32.exe and unchecking everything. I remember doing it in another way... however, I don't remember how. )Strange, no?

For some reason, I don't see this topic belonging in Sports. I like a large variety of games, although my favorites lie within the real-time strategy and first-person shooter genres. I currently am bouncing from and to games, having played Portal (an EXCELLENT game that I strongly suggest even picking up The Orange Box just for it), Call of Duty 4 (a must if you love first-person shooters... the campaign is short but immersive), and I'm just getting into World in Conflict.Past games on the PC that I've enjoyed include the Need for Speed series, the entire Command & Conquer series (especially Generals: Zero Hour and C&C3: Tiberium Wars), Red Faction 1 and 2, Battlefield 2, Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries (THE most fun Mechwarrior game I've played... and this includes the newer ones by Microsoft), Fable, Diablo, and many more that I have already forgotten. Of course, there are the console games... and out of all of them, I love Nintendo best by far. The Halo series was great, but despite the awesome fun you get out of Halo LAN parties, I actually had more fun with Nintendo classics like the Zelda series and the Super Mario series. The Wii has reintroduced me to Rayman, which is inarguably the most fun multiplayer game EVER (with its silly mini-games and the Wii's innovative gameplay). Back in the day, I enjoyed 007 and Perfect Dark multiplayer on the N64, which were good times. Before that, I was enjoying games like Earthbound, Final Fantasy, and even Street Fighter on the SNES.Yep... I was raised with gaming. Who remembers the Commodore 64? (I know everyone knows about the Atari.)

Just out of curiosity, how would this be better in terms of revenue compared with other investment options?It almost seems like you can't lose money, but I'm sure you can't sell out either if your money doesn't earn anything to break even.Still scary in the world of the stock market... I'm sticking to my mutual funds and hoping to pick winners there.Plus, a lot of winning stocks cost so much to begin with that you can't earn much unless you have a stellar performance hike or tons of cash to invest.If anyone is looking into trading, though, and is in for the long-term, I would advise in stocks focused on agriculture and telecommunications. However, these stocks are $30-100 PER SHARE... which is why I just pick out mutual funds and automatically diversify my portfolio.

Wow... we Asian people are screwed then, with our squinty eyes and tiny wankers. To think that this is where our research goes towards... I can't wait until Love Potion #9 comes out. I suppose that this may be true... a lot of people can actually appreciate the eyes as an attractive feature. I'm personally up for facial features top and foremost, but this does include the eyes... and I think I do notice those first before anything else on someone's face.As far as "reading" them for emotion and thought, I'm at a loss. Yikes.

And I thought a paper crane was cool. At least the crane was made of just one piece of paper. But if someone could fold a dragon out of one piece of paper... yikes.

I have DSL that acts like dial-up a lot...I still remember back in the day when an MP3 had an average download time of 2 hours... and I was happy with that. As for the person that wanted 100GB/s speeds... we now have fiber. But be prepared to shell out more moola for more bandwidth... I believe Verizon's FiOS now offers 30MB/s bandwidth at the consumer level for most urban areas, although I believe that you may be shelling out $50 a month for that, up to $80/mo for 50MB/s.

I hear BootVis is an excellent utility to analyze what services and programs are starting up on boot and loading of the OS. I suggest you kill any extraneous services, startup programs, and clean up your boot sequence... or at least optimize start up so that your hard drive will be free to find and access your icon files faster.

Then again, it could just be Windows. Wouldn't surprise me.

Are these default icons or icons being called from somewhere else? I have a similar issue, but it's not really bad since I am loading my personal icons from my external hard drive.

CTFMON.exe is a program instance that Microsoft uses as a support for certain features. You can read more about it here and how to disable it.

There will be fan boys of both Windows and PCs against Mac OS X and Apple products.So before you say anything, just a bit of a note: Try to go for the educated post.I'll post my opinion tomorrow... I'm too tired to right now. It's bedtime for me.

From my understanding, a Trojan horse is how it was depicted in relation to the Siege of Troy... but isn't it, by defition, only dangerous if someone exploits that "backdoor?"Trojans themselves can harbor other malicious code, such as a continuous creation of an obvious virus to mask the Trojan itself (or at least keep attention away from it) or as an additional bit of salt to the injury, and it really isn't a virus by itself (from my understanding), but simply a program that assists hackers in gaining access to a machine. (Antivirus programs will detect them, however.)One infamous (but rather harmless) Trojan that I remember fooling around with was Netbus. It was simply a program that you could run on your own machine and actually target another machine by IP address, but the things you could do with it were rather limited and for annoyances only (by its GUI, anyway): killing windows, forcing a shutdown, opening and closing the CD/DVD drive, and "sending" alert messages.

@ Saint Michael and Plug:

 

Yeah... maybe the subject title was a wee bit misleading. I'm willing to pay a little bit more for more productivity and performance, which is why I jumped the gun with a quad core as opposed to a dual core processor. I am NOT willing to overclock anything, since there isn't much sense in gaining 66MHz or whatever when it will shorten the life expectancy by a good bit. (Back in the day, it made sense, but I'd rather have my build last longer. Chances are that I won't even miss the slight boost of speed that I would get from safe and stable overclocking. )

 

However, I found out that it wasn't just a mere $50... thanks so much for finding that E6750! Question: What's the difference between the E6750 and the E6700 that warrants the outrageous price difference of $130?! I was defending the choice of the quad core because it seemed to be only $50 more than the processor I was looking at, but the E6750 you found was a boon. I previously gave quad core no chance because I figured it was overpriced and not worth the look (before I thought there was only a $50 difference), but now my previous stance remains. Thanks for that.

 

I picked the case I initially went with because Tom's Hardware recommended it very highly, plus it actually looks pretty nice. The non-traditional internal design seems to make use of a passive cooling solution by design... but this was one component I threw to the wind and picked out because someone said so. I'll consider the other ones because although Lian Li makes nice cases, the darn thing is $219 by itself! Not super keen on something that looks like a sci-fi toy though...

 

As mentioned previously, your RAM choices were for 2GB, and I figured I'd chip in a little bit more for 4GB. I'm not super familiar with the differences between 64-bit and 32-bit... I'll have to do some homework on that one. (I thought that it was the fault of XP not being able to utilize more than 3.5GB of RAM?) The 2GB choices are tempting though, as running a machine even with a game like F.E.A.R., a few applications, and background services on my current laptop with 2GB don't produce too much of a hiccup as far as RAM goes for gaming.

 

Water cooling still scares me. I would try it out but you also have to go through the whole process of having to switch out the fluids periodically... which means more chances for me to fudge up and ruin a machine. I did read into it earlier and figured that it was just simpler to run sinks and fans... I figured that maybe a VGA cooler and aftermarket CPU cooler would help those components from going unstable at higher temperatures? Or am I being paranoid and the stock cooling hardware included with the components will actually prevent that?

 

I took another look at motherboards and funny-enough, I got a different board but at the same price with less negative reviews. The Gigabyte board I was originally looking at had problems with bad BIOS flashes... which knocked the rating down considerably. This ABIT board seems pretty good, well peer-reviewed, and of course features more than enough but with the prospective performance that I would like (P35 Northbridge, etc.).

 

As for the hard drive... that's what I thought when 2GB was more then enough. That turned to 20GB... which turned to 80GB... which turned to 200GB... and I just very recently filled up my 200GB external. (Music, programs, etc. fill up a lot of space... especially today, when it's hard to find a commercial product that doesn't suck up more than 100MB.) I'm working now off of a 500GB for saving the larger files on my 200GB external...

 

The power supply was an iffy decision, since I mentioned that I don't know of a convenient way to figure out power usage from each component. I would imagine that there's an idle wattage and a peak wattage so you could simply add the figures up... I'll look into those power supplies since you're probably right on bumping up the juice box to around 700W.

 

I did have a video card in that list, but I just noticed that they're out of stock. Not sure if they're going to restock or not... but I would like something along the performance lines of the NVIDIA 8800 GS GPU. I know it's rather expensive and up there, but the prices seem to justify the performance boost (twice the price for twice the frame rate). I'll have to look more into those choices you provided me, as well as how much of a difference it will be in real life (as I see it) and if it's worth going for. I want to make sure that they support Dx10 also.

 

I'm planning on a great sound system in the future. I love sound and have not had much opportunity to enjoy the luxury of true surround gaming. Realistically, I don't know if I'll be able to tell between an X-Fi chipset or the older Audigy, but then again, I haven't had the chance to actually sit down and playtest these cards. (I've also been under the notion that aftermarket sound cards are supposedly superior to onboard... but then again, times have changed.) I wish I could do something like that at BestBuy or something like how they have their home theatre "experiences;" sound is very subjective and I don't know how much of a difference sound card and/or onboard qualities will be, if you get what I'm trying to say. (I don't know how to word that at the moment.)

 

Funny as it is, I have no idea what I'm going to get for a monitor yet. I was so focused on the hardware components that I haven't looked into monitors... Definitely going to go with an LCD, even though their refresh rates aren't as good as a CRT (but I hear that they are very close nowadays). I'm actually pretty happy with my 17" laptop LCD, but time will tell as to what I'll eventually settle for.

 

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

rayzoredge what plug in do you have installed on FF3B2 because most of the plug-ins that are installed have not even been pushed to FF3 yet, now granted you could be using ones that I don't use. Right now I have 5 tabs open myself and I am hovering around 65,000L right now with like 5 active plug-ins, and of course I tweaked the memory as well to help lower it, and I know several posts have mentioned how to tweak it including the one I made on the FF3 topic.

I just have the usual set for viewing most web sites... Flash, Adobe Reader, DRM, QuickTime, and I just threw on Silverlight for kicks and giggles. (This is a work computer... so I don't care.)

StumbleUpon is the only extension that made it past. Everything else got nix'd with the "upgrade."

My numbers are without the memory leak tweak, though. Then again, that tweak only takes effect once you have Firefox minimized... and I can't remember how well it works. (If I do remember correctly, it reduces down to 15MB of RAM or so minimized, but climbs back up when you go back to using it.)

I just reformatted my personal laptop and have not got around to applying the memory leak fix or the other tweaks in the about:config file. I don't remember if they actually make a huge difference or not... but every bit helps.

CD sales are decreasing due to piracy, but that doesn't mean there won't be fans.Fans go to concerts and shows. Those in turn make quite a bit of revenue. I'm not sure how much goes to the artists themselves, but I'm sure it's a pretty penny.CD sales may be decreasing, but there are legitimate download sites that still price songs and albums.YouTube is definitely a way for people to make their "15 minutes of fame" noted and made available to anyone with an Internet connection. And you know how many memes and people have made their debut on YouTube...I don't see why MySpace should be paying for artists. Don't the artists themselves sign up for the service and use it as a venue to attract fans and a fan base (if they're new)? It would be great, but I don't see the necessity... or the incentive for MySpace to do it.News Corp. owns MySpace... they already make millions off of their other investments and whatever they do. (Sorry... I'm ignorant of them... ) Myspace is just another source of cash flow... and if big companies don't give much of a hoot to the underdog now, assimilating smaller entities will probably not change their mind on the matter.There is the rising problem of being an artist because of these points you made, but instead of giving up, artists are going to have to find creative ways to reach out to their fans in order to generate income. (For instance, artists in Brazil encourage piracy by passing out free CDs to grow an audience for their concerts and shows, as well as establish a presence in the music industry.)

A cell phone seems like a necessity, but to me, it's more of a convenience.I lost use of my cell phone when it was stolen out of my car a couple months ago. While waiting for the insurance to ship me a new one (two weeks or so), it was painfully-obvious to see how one can be addicted and almost dependent on one.I don't make a lot of phone calls. But when I do, it's nice to be able to get in touch with anyone just to share a moment, ask if someone needs anything from the store, or get business done on the run. It's also nice to be able to be contacted by friends and family... it still frustrates me quite a bit that my parents are out of touch as soon as they leave the house. Cell phones are great in emergencies too when you are helping a fellow motorist by calling AAA or even 911 should the worst happen.I don't play games or listen to music all that often on my cell phone... and I don't really text too often if at all.In all reality, I love having a cell phone for the convenience, but I can live without one.Good job to OP, by the way, for surviving 12 days. In this happy-go-lucky technology world of ours with the newer generation, not a lot of people could survive a day without going mad.

I've actually considered suicide.I didn't do it for attention because I hated attention. I don't usually talk about things because I don't like burdening people with my problems that only I can make a difference in. I started thinking about suicide because I was super-hard on myself. And it took being in the army as an armorer with an M9 Beretta and a full magazine of 9mm rounds sitting on my desk to realize that I was going too far on being harsh on myself.People think of suicide for different reasons. I, almost being stereotypically Asian, was ashamed of myself and of my failures and mistakes. I was always striving for excellence, for perfection. It took me a while, but I finally had the self-realization that suicide was a stupid answer and a coward's way out of the problems that were bothering me.A lot of people just feel like they don't have anything to live for because of the events happening around them. There's no real way to really help anyone but to help them help themselves. Once you convince that person that things happen, it's normal to feel the way he or she feels, and that the future can bring in possible relief but suicide will prevent you from ever knowing, I think that one may recuperate and continue to live life.There's always a way around things. Soldiers come back from Iraq. Those that don't gave their lives for something noble, and your friend should rest assured that he or she can be proud of that. Relationships come and go. It sucks, but everyone finds someone eventually. Patience is a virtue most overlooked. (Heck, even I'm tired of waiting, but I'll wait even longer if it turns out to be worth the wait.) There are literally TONS of people to meet in one's lifetime as there are fish in the sea. I hate using cliche answers, and everyone hates them, but it's usually the way to make an analogous answer that will hopefully help someone realize the bigger picture, that life is worth living.The best thing that you can do, though, is LISTEN. I'm sure you knew that by now, though. Be an outlet for him or her to vent. "Understand" what he or she is going through and sympathize.I hope your friend comes out of the rut.

This should be applicable to every post concerning comparisons, praises, down-talking... just about everything.I personally hate it when people bash a product but have no arguments or supporting clauses as to why "it sucks." It can't just "suck," can it? (Well, it can... but there's always a reason why.)So many people are rather ignorant when they post their opinion... and I won't say that I'm not guilty of that too sometimes. But an informative, educated post is much better than the abundant flow of replies of "omg yeah i agree that it sucks lol". It's almost detrimental to do that here on Xisto... words matter here for credit, not to mention reputability.

Are you talking about the Honda FCX Clarity?

 

I honestly can't wait for this car to be more widespread once hydrogen fuel cells become more prevalent nation-wide. The car itself looks very good, and I'd love to own something that runs super clean.

 

I wonder how much it would be (in layman's terms) to fill up a fuel-cell powered car?

 

Cost of fuel cells by Wikipedia:

 

Currently, hydrogen fuel cells are costly to produce and fragile. Scientists are studying how to produce inexpensive fuel cells that are robust enough to survive the bumps and vibrations that all automobiles experience. Also, many designs require rare substances such as platinum as a catalyst in order to work properly. Such a catalyst can also become contaminated by impurities in the hydrogen supply. In the past few years, however, a nickel-tin catalyst has been under development which may lower the cost of cells.^[11] Fuel cells are generally priced in USD/kW, and data is scarce regarding costs. Producer Ballard is virtually alone in publishing such data. Their 2005 figure was $73 USD/kW (based on high volume manufacturing estimates), which they said was on track to achieve the U.S. DoE's 2010 goal of $30 USD/kW. This would achieve closer parity with internal combustion engines for automotive applications, allowing a 100 kW fuel cell to be produced for $3000. 100 kW is about 134 hp.^[12]

Each browser has its pros and cons, but when all is said and done, most people can agree that Internet Explorer is on the bottom of the list for most desirable. If you're comparing IE6 with any instance of Firefox (1, 2, or even 3 beta), you will already notice that Firefox supports tabbed browsing, extensions, themes, and is open source for anyone to edit and make better. So if you think about it, Firefox is a browser made by the people who use it. And who could make something better than the people who use the product themselves?Firefox, so far, has been rather secure compared to Internet Explorer. I'm still waiting for the day, however, that a hacker will knock Mac users off their high horses. The same applies for Firefox users.One problem with Firefox, however, is the fact that it just takes up too much memory. Right now, I'm running five tabs and Firefox 3 Beta 2 is taking up 127,000Kb, or about 124 MB of RAM off of a 1GB RAM machine. I hope that Firefox developers will find a way to nip that problem in the bud; however, no promising outcomes since the browser came out.Another problem, more towards the web designers, is that Firefox doesn't support some CSS properties that Internet Explorer enjoys. Not to mention what Polter said about having to design websites for multiple browsers... it's already a pain that you have to strive for a uniform look in any browser.I still use Firefox religiously though.

I would have personally re-ordered these features... and actually trimmed some things from it. A lot of applications were just useless, like the Microsoft Network browser. (Who ever used it?) Some items on that list were more like gripes (like how Windows Explorer couldn't do a bunch of stuff OTHER than browsing). Then again, shouldn't Windows be superior as an operating system TO include features for Explorer?

 

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11. Shut Down

I laughed when I read this. It's true that there are too many options to choose from just to turn off your computer... and now Vista offers FIFTEEN ways to shut down? Seriously now. And honestly, I can't tell you the difference between standby and sleep. (Hibernate just saves your state and shuts down your computer, to restore your state that was saved on your hard drive.)

 

10. DriveSpace

I still remember when I got all excited over compressing my hard drive to get DOUBLE my hard disk space. It was a no-brainer at the time, when 2GB HDs were a boon. Then I realized how slow a 266MHz processor was in accessing data from a compressed hard drive. DriveSpace wasn't very keen on choices either... you either compressed the whole drive or didn't. Apparently no one else missed it in XP.

 

9. Aero (and Vista)

It's cool, it's neat, and I'm one of many that appreciates the eye candy. But the fact that Vista already brings existing machines down to slow-poking slugs being so inefficient with system resources kind of keeps most tech-savvy people away. And those that aren't tech-savvy will wonder why their computer is slow right out of the package.

 

8. Messenger Service

I actually don't know of ONE IT guy or gal that uses this for network communication. Of course, e-mail makes this kind of useless, doesn't it? And of course, if you do see this in action, you're probably not part of a secure network. Kind of ironic, really.

 

7. Indexing Service/Windows XP Search

The indexing service slows down your PC, and XP search STILL can't find what you want to find in an efficient way. Lose-lose.

 

6. Task Manager (End Task)

Why does it not just work? Why does it take forever to kill a task? Why, in this time and age, can't we just stop a process or application from running? The world may never know.

 

5. Notifications

Thank you, Captain Obvious. Redundant much? Thankfully, you can turn these off by editing the registry... but then again, who would want to risk that?

 

4. Windows Update

Especially after knowing that Microsoft is very willing to update your computer without even letting you know AFTER you tell Windows NOT to automatically update, I personally disabled the Automatic Updates service. The fact that it pesters the crap out of you isn't much fun either... it's almost better just to install hot fixes manually, or if you're like me, sit on Service Pack 2 and not worry about much as a home user. Simply put: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Most hot fixes and patches are for specific occurrences anyway... and unless you are that 1 person out of 100 that is actually experiencing that problem, I wouldn't even bother.

3. ActiveX Controls (and Internet Explorer)

Along with the fact that they are exclusive to Internet Explorer (which is probably a good thing), they are easily the most exploited security threat to most users browsing the web. It almost seems like anyone can write up one with some malicious intent in it... and you know how most people blindly accept ActiveX controls just to get at what they want to get at with no hassle. The fact that Internet Explorer 6 was the basis for loyal Microsoft clients, unchanged for the longest time allowing for hackers galore to attack the browser's many security holes, didn't help out either.

 

2. Windows Genuine Authentication

Authentication sucks. Especially if you have a legitimate program and no one in the Microsoft world is willing to believe you. Not to mention that every time you install a non-OEM version of any Microsoft operating system you have to authenticate it by phone, since Windows isn't likely to have your network controller working with a fresh install. Did I also mention that time just stops if WGA says that your legal copy of Windows isn't legal?

 

1. The Registry

This is definitely the WORST feature of Windows, in my opinion. PC World is right about one mistake bringing an entire operating system down to its knees... absolutely horrendous. And if even advanced users aren't willing to touch this, how is it a good idea to put all of Windows's vital data into one such unstable database? Editing the darn thing is like taking a block away from a Jenga game...

 

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I actually found Paint to be rather useful for quick copy-and-paste work for a screen shot when I didn't feel like waiting 10 seconds for PhotoShop to boot up. Movie Maker is okay for amateur videos... it lacks in features, but I suppose that's what you get for applications bundled with the operating system. (They really couldn't give you everything for that $200+ you spent on the operating system... )

Consider this reposted... again and again on my MySpace bulletin board. Awesome find, jlhaslip.