reith

It's cliche I'm sure, and I'm fine if people flame or get upset by it, but this is something that I've used to help pay for my past MMOs/games/dvds/pcupgrades before. This is a revamped version that doesn't give you the nasty pop-ups, or any spyware of the sort (I've checked it out, but feel free to check for yourself) It doesn't earn you that much, only a penny per click but over time and if you get friends to help you, it really does add up. With so many people waiting for some new games/videos to come out, I decided to start it up again and have already made a couple dollars rather recently, and within the next few months even with no more referrals I should have enough to cover a month or more of the next games/videos that comes out (It's Aion for me ). Of course it works best with the more people you get to refer. Use it how you want, but I know a lot of my friends who were using it regrettably before me and got me to sign up, used it to pay for their subscriptions for their online games, and helped one of my friends replace his crappy video card. The main reason I picked this up and use it more than all the others you see is, I used to constantly get spyware, adware and all sorts of popups and crap from the older types of click-to-pay type money making sites, this one is on a 30s timer which means you can open one, resume doing whatever you were doing, go back 30 seconds later, close it and open another. I've been doing this quite luckily so far, I don't think it's a good move to actually buy their clickers but it seems to be a good site and I've checked many times over - I've gotten no spyware, adware, or virus/trojans or anything like that. Use it at your own discretion and if you feel like using it, go ahead, if not, then I hope you find something better, just trying to show some things. Tell me if you want to hear some of the experiences personally my friends and I have had, it's a fairly new site but collectively the three of us have gotten around 115$ total. Anyways, for people who don't mind it, go ahead and sign up, it says you need an alertpay account but you can just post anything you want until you get one set up, just alter it in the profile tab after you get your account. I'd appreciate a referral but I'm not doing it for me, so if you prefer not to then don't but if you do since I provided a link go ahead, I hope anybody who tries it gets some good use out of it. http://buxgroup.to/bux/ Notice from jlhaslip: removed Referral Link

Thanks, I was kind of hoping for something like that. I was sorta freaking out about all my precious files being lost. Thanks for the heads up ^^

I had forgot about my site and about Xisto for a very long time and went far into the negative, and since all my secured files for my site are on my Xisto account, i could not log in via ftp to get them, and for some reason my cpanel wouldn't log me in either. I posted as much as I could and am now in 9.99 credits. I thought my account unsuspended itself after 4 credits? I could use any help in this, if it helps my -credits was something around -40 if I recall correctly. I really need to get my files and am unsure why my ftp won't work anymore, did something change? I know the way credits are displayed changed because it used to be on the forum area, but now it's somewhere else, just curious if something else got changed, or maybe if all my info got deleted, either way I'd really like to know.

Notice from jlhaslip: Plagiarised from: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Board Rules Xisto Readme Please read the information in the link provided. Thanks Forgive me for the self-reply but instead of making a new topic, I figured i'd post this bit, which for me, not a single thing has changed here, there's still a massive problem with support for Vista from pre-existing companies, even big firewall companies STILL don't have support for many. Notice from jlhaslip: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Material from other sources must be inside Quote bbcode as per the Xisto Readme. Board Rules

Yeah I don't have an mp3 player or anything sadly to plug into it as far as I know, I have a wide array of ports int he back of my computer for speakers, but mine only use the green and black ports, and i'm sure they're working just fine, it's very confusing and incredibly frustrating to know the speakers i spent a lot of money on are going with hardly any wear and tear on them, and being kept in as good of condition as possible from start to finish, I've no clue what else to do, does anybody know of any good speaker systems for the computer that are good quality? I guess i'll have to start looking for new parts. Edit: Fuse change didn't work, was nothing wrong with the older one tried swapping in the new one anyways and there's no change, no nicks in cable that i can see, i'mjust totally perplexed by this.

After being quite reluctant to do this because I didn't really wanna screw my windows up, I did quite a few of the suggestions and I have noticed a marked increase in performance. I already have a fairly good computer but it makes it start up faster, and open and close programs, especially on XP much faster, which is very nice and a neat little trick to improve your windows functions.

I'm wondering if they'll fix any of the bugs with Vista SP1, does anybody know the date it comes out or what exactly may or may not be in it? Sorry if it's been posted before but I have a very limited amount of time to be on because my net keeps closing down on me x.x. Again I apologize for asking something that's probably been asked a whole lot before. I'm looking forward tot his honestly, though I've no clue what they could add besides more security hole fixes etc to Vista and Xp, but if anybody has a list or an idea of what will be fixed, like NVIDIA's 8800gtx problem with some games, especially FFXI and a fwe others, I'd love to hear about it, or even ifs omebody reads this and has found a fix already for some things, especiallyt he ffxi thing either PM me or email me if you can ^^ thanks again for any info.

This list while maybe a select few are true, most are completely laughable and just downright sad in my opinion. Many of them are hilarious for even suggesting they're as useful and as good as they, I honestly want to know who thought this up, compiled it, and truly acted and thought it was supposed to be some sort of serious "omg this is so speechless/cool" kind of list. It's just utterly retarded, they should be spending time working out bugs, FIXING the 8800gtx & Vista bugs that plague one of the best dx10 gfx cards instead of doing this silly list that nobody really cares about, and most people will be found posting it and laughing at it.

I've searched and searched all over and I can't find anything about this, the speakers are in great condition, while they're several years old they have been taken care of in mint condition all the time, recently the noise has literally cut in half or less, I"ve never had to put my speaker volume up to 50% or higher and now I can't hear a single thing unless i put it up to full blast, I've checked *all* windows controls, all software controls for my drivers, even updated the drivers, switched from XP to vista which all have different drivers and it's the same no matter what the volume seems to freak out on me and very very seldomly the volume goes right back to normal, which is pretty much ear shattering at 100% volume, so I've been stuck using my headphones to be able to hear anything without the risk of needing to change pants or having a heart attack. Does anybody know what I could do to fix it? I'm unable to find out what's wrong and new speakers are impossible right now which really is dampening my video game enthusiasm and enjoyment. If it helps any I hardly ever have my subwoofer on 100% just because the bass gets pretty loud, and I've yet to see if the fuse for the subwoofer is the problem but it really seems like it wouldn't cause the present problem, all connections are secure, I've redone them time and time again and checked them all to make sure nothing is bare or broken in any way. This coupled with my recent outage of net and then going at 32kbps speed instead of the supposed 8mbps, anyways I'd really like any insight on this, I'm really interested in getting somebody to help me, and thanks in advance for any help.

The post seemed to help me and my fiance quite a bit, we're still having problems with our net, but it's made it at least livable until we get the service tech out here. Nothing is really going to stop a 75% packet loss due to signal and other issues >.> btw I dislike Brighthouse Networks Road Runner cable internet with great intensity. But once again thank you for helping me and my fiance out, we were getting constant signal loss, and almost always disconnecting every few moments, but now we're able to stay on, slowly but better than unable to.

Thanks very much for the help, it worked perfectly. If you have a spare moment, do you know exactly why my php include didn't work and the one you used did? Is it because things work better / right with these servers and they didn't on all the other ones I've been on? I'm not entirely sure why the two different codes do the same but one works while the other doesn't. However thank you very much for making it work for me, I greatly appreciate it. And I only put that much code because he said he wanted to see all of the php file >_>

I don't have a .htaccess file, i'm not even sure what it is, the php file is quite large but I'll post it here in code tags regardless.Edit: Deleted coding.

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/Should be the link, your link for some reason doesn't show the reithonry.php file which is what i use as my layout and everything, without adding the reithonry.php in there all links head to the chat, not exactly sure why, but try again with that link verbatim and it should show you exactly what I see. Thanks againf or helping jlhaslip, I really do appreciate your assistance. I rechecked the paths again and it seems everything is in order, still unsure of what's wrong, wish I knew how to fix this.

All files are in my public_html folder, within sub folders and such related to each thing the php calls for, the main problem isn't that it's just one file or one page that's missing, anything aside from the php file that i use is not working, typing it in or otherwise trying to direct to it won't let me see anything on the page, and i'm 99.999% certain all files are in the proper folders that are needed, though I'll check a few more times just to be sure. I'm not exactly sure what more coding you want, I only have one php file and that's in the main public_html directory, many of the other files are in the same directory with a few exceptions in other folders within the public_html folder, should I put public_html or www folder as extensions in the php link, or is leaving it blank sufficient? Currently a link looks exactly ilke this below. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Should it be id=public_html/chapters.html?

I did exactly as you said for changing the file permissions to 777, still no change at all, I applied all changes to the public_html folder (where all my files for the site are) and applied the changes to all files there within so that I would be sure no file was at the default 750 code. I'll post the code I use to make this happen, all other sites have had no problems, I'm not sure why this is being such a big hassle, but thanks for the advice, I really do appreciate any help I can get. <td valign="top"><?php include ("$id"); ?></td>The td is just the area I place it so that all other pages fall within that table area, the php include is where I use the tag reference so that I can just type in "reithonry.php?id=file.html" and that file can remain very small and with only the content on it, while the layout is loaded around it via the reithonry file, this has worked on all hosts that have had php enabled, so I'm confused why it's not working here, perhaps I need to use something else, if there is anything that would allow me to keep one file for layout/design and all other files for pure content that goes within a certain area I'd be more than happy to use that instead, as long as it allows pretty much the same and for my other pages to remain clean with just content on them.

I use a single php file for all my tag decorations and image calling so that each page is lighter and therefore isn't bogged down with the same repeated code over and over, which allows me not only to much easier change my layout and design (as I often do) but once I've finally gotten it up and working here, I realized none of the links work, I doubled, and triple checked them over and over again to make sure I wasn't making a mistake. I swore Xisto supported php, so why isn't it working? Am I missing some sorta code that i need to add, or need to take away, I'd really hate to have to switch to a much lesser host just because of this, but if the problem cannot be resolved I have no real alternative since all my pages cannot be viewed by clicking the links since all have ".php?id=" references. Any help at all would be immensely beneficial and much appreciated. If by chance somebody knows how to be able to view the same site using a php main file w/ all the tags and decorations, on them on the computer (Vista or XP if it makes a diff, i can use both) I would also be very grateful as it'd allow me an alternative to having to switch to another host and instead just looking at them on my computer, and giving it to my fiance who can look at it on hers (though her only option is XP). I know you can look at plain html files and navigate links that call to your C: locations but using the php?id= didn't work and it would show the cannot find error message in ie and firefox, and windows explorer. Anyways, again thank you very much for any help you may have to offer me, even a definitive answer would be beneficial at this point in time.EDIT: By the way, this is the error message that shows up on the page, rather than any of the text i have for it. "Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening '' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/;) in /home/reith/public_html/reithonry.php on line 255" without the quotes. Is there perhaps something wrong with the layout of the folders, and would it at all be alleviated if I deleted all the folders in the ftp upload and just had the main site folder hold everything? The public_html and www folders somewhat confuse me as to why they're there, all hosts that i've had, had a very simplistic folder that you just deleted and made in place what you wanted, and i'm unsure of if placing my files in the public_html folder was right or wrong.

Thanks for the info, though I already knew much of it I find it's good to get it out there to the general public more such as you have. And personally I have a 32" LCD monitor but it only cost me 700$ maybe i got lucky or something, it's a Samsung and one of the main reasons LCD's lose their life of viewing is people pump up the brightness all the way (which nearly freakin' blinded me when i first got it) i turned mine down to about 30 not just for life expectancy to increase but also because it's bright enough as it is there, I'm used to an old huge clunker of a CRT 20" screen size that emitted crazy heat and was always at max brightness. So i figure I got several more years added on just by cranking it down to a tolerable viewing level. It's personal preference to me but the blacks look black on my screen, maybe it's 'slightly' more black on plasma, but for something like a computer monitor where you're always running nearly stationary images (desktop certain games etc) there really is no reason to have a plasma since it'll burn in. The future is lcd monitors as they keep making large strides in making them bigger and cheaper, though plasma certainly fuels much of this burst of technology and i welcome it because without competition our markets would crash and be dominated by singular companies that only care about profit. Anyways sorry about the small tangent, I must say I highly advise any LCD, it's come a long way from what i remember it used to be like, and if you can get one with a hard cover polyurethane screen over it that protects the actual LCD screen from smudges and dust and the like, then you're even more in the clear than most of us.

I fully agree too, when you do it yourself you're susceptible to bouts of insecurity, unwillingness or just plain lazy, and having somebody else there to go with you, do the workouts with you as well not only motivates many men like myself competitively but also you help each other, if you're going alone you figure if you skip a day that's okay, no big deal, but if you skip a day with a friend they'll come over and usually drag your *bottom* over to the gym or wherever you go to do the workout and they'll help keep you on track. I know i watch myself much more around my friends that work out with me rather than if i'm alone, i'm not sure why but it definitely gives a shift in mentality and helps me to focus on eating right, being healthier and not being some lazy SOB who never gets off his couch and just watches tv all day. I refuse to be apart of the growing trend of obesity in America and my friends help me to keep on track, I highly suggest each of you try to find somebody to work out with, it really can do wonders for you.

Now that I have a bit more time to talk about the orange box I'd strongly urge anybody who played half life 2 to go out and get this, for 50 mere dollars (less than the price of most new console games) you get Half Life 2, Half Life 2 Episode One, Portal, Team Fortress 2 and Half Life 2 Episode 2.If you own one of the previous games you get a 'gift' if you order on steam where you can sell or give it to a friend if you want so that they can play the game for free. It is truly a shift in what I feel and think game designs will be in the future and is definitely a welcomed change in my opinion. Portal while short has immense replay value because after you beat it, you not only get a glimpse of Episode 3 (the person from portal will be in episode 3 and will interact with gordon), but you also get to replay levels with varying difficulty and i'm sure later on people will make some amazing maps for others to play, which will definitely enhance the experience. It's the first game that was a mix of first person physic puzzles, comedy, and fps-ishness. I preordered it and saved 5$ which i'm very glad I did, and I also got to play TF2. If you've ever played TFC (i'm sure many of us have) and you hated when you spawned immediately because that same guy who would spam grenades at the spawn point was sitting there lobbing grenade after grenade, and if you killed him, he'd come right back anyways and there'd be no delay, and usually your team stalemated with the other because they couldn't get past a certain chokepoint because each team insta-respawned after death making the number on each side hardly decrease for any meaningful amount of time. At the same time if you hated how Counter-Strike put you in the death zone until the next round started and you felt you learned from your mistake but couldn't actually get to play again until the round started but by then you couldn't really learn from your mistake because everything was now different and new from a new round, you'll love the perfect balance Team Fortress 2 gives. The average respawn depending on server is around 12s, some have instant spawns for high competition high octane matches which in it's own right is highly fun, but at the same time that's not the norm in the least, and even though it's not been out long at all, there are several valve test servers which have new maps created by themselves that they're testing, and new maps from players are popping up all over the place, people are just having a field day with this game and the new editors. Saying the game is beautiful graphically would be an understatement, and even though I don't get any lag at the highest settings, I've seen the game on the lowest, and it still looks incredibly good compared to TFC, of course you lose a hell of a lot of the beautiful things, but at the same time at least you can play the game and experience the true beauty of the game - the gameplay. Each class is perfectly balanced, of course some classes are stronger in certain areas but they all have their unique advantages and not one class can get over each other's advantage entirely.A few major notes first about Team Fortress 2 that they changed though should be mentioned. First I know it's minimal but the start screen is really cool and much more Team Fortress 2 looking, with a chalkboard that whatever server mod can write aboutt he maps they have etc on there, and for official maps there's an option to watch a video on the map to learn about it and what you should do. You're allowed to pick a team by choosing the Blu door or the Red door, and Blu isn't a typo by the way. Then you get to *see* each of the classes and see them move a bit and they're all categorized into various categories of offense, support, defense so people know what job is where and so they can better help their team. Also in the lower right hand corner you'll see the jobs your team has currently so you can better choose, see no medics but a lot of heavies? Pick a medic to help your team achieve victory and keep those hard hitting big lugs alive. See no scouts but a ton of strong offensives, yet your team never seems to have the gusto and speed to grab the intelligence (which has replaced the 'flag' in this game, much better imo, it also leaves a trail of shimmering papers when you have it which makes it easier to track people, especially faster ones who move out of sight fast) and bring it back to your base for some points. Grenades, something I really hated in team fortress classic are abolished in team fortress 2 thankfully, you'll never see one of those heavy grenades lobbed at you, and then see those annoying red balls pop out and explode killing you, nor will you see the hallucinating grenade of a spy, or the nail grenade of soldier, they're all gone, nobody can throw grenades anymore, the only explosions you'll get are from Demos and Soldiers. And the last major adjustment, nobody has armor, it's all an HP value that you can only get augmented by a medic up to 50% over your total HP, as long as the medic is healing you, you will stay at 150% which is a big boost to the huge HP of a heavy, and it also helps even if you charge somebody up, they can run away still having their high hp even though it falls over time it's good to charge an ally up rushing into combat to help them sustain a few extra hits.The classes are much better balanced and much different really, each class has 3 weapons no more, no less. They have their speciality weapon, Soldier's get a rocket launcher, demo's get a grenade lobber, medics get their healing gun (looks like a ghost buster's thing imo), scouts get a lever action double barreled shotgun, engineers get a shotgun, heavies get a gatling gun, sniper's get their sniper rifle, and pyro's get their flamethrower, and they all have a secondary weapon which is usually some type of gun, most of the classes get a simple shotgun with the exception of the medic, the demo, the scout, the sniper, and the engineer. The medic gets a modified version of the old nail gun, into a really cool looking hypodermic needle launcher that fires rounds very fast, but they don't go very long distances and fall so you have to aim accordingly, demo's get another grenade launcher that launches sticky grenades that can explode whenever they press the alt fire key, so you can defend or set up a trap or just cause the grenade to explode whenever you want it to, you can fire up to 8 at once to be used over that number they start replacing the older ones by making the older ones explode. The scout gets a pistol that is much more accurate over long distances, but not nearly as deadly as their shotgun up close, sniper's get an automatic version of their rifle for dealing with closer foes, and the engineer gets his trusty PDA in which he can construct teleporters, dispensers, and sentry guns. The classes are also much more balanced, for example, the heavy can deal much damage up close, but far away his shots are inaccurate and much of his ammo will be wasted trying to hurt you, this gives somebody like a sniper a prime target to hit in the head and easily kill. In the same right though a scout can move up behind a sniper and shoot him easily a fwe times while they can't see and kill them before they have a chance to do anything, while a pyro just needs a few short seconds to incinerate a scout, and a soldier only needs to fire a few rockets to dismember a pyro, an engineer can setup a sentry to take down most players, and their shotgun is lethal more than the others as well. a demo man can bomb the sentry, while a spy can come up behind and shank whoever they wish in the back killing them instantly, spy's are probably the most changed imo because they can be seen as what job they are on your team so you're not thinking they're another team, and at the samet ime they can disguise themselves to look like another teammate, they take on their name and everything, it's a random name of course, because sometimes i've seen my wife's name (who plays next to me) somewhere where she isn't and i know it's a spy, or sometimes very rarely i've seen my name and it was too late to do anything about it because it was more of a shock than a realization. They can also invisble themselves for a short amount of time allowing them to sneak past the battle and ontot he enemies side so it doesn't look like a red teammember is among the blue not getting shot at or anything. Also it's very easy to trust your teammates without knowing that your teammate really plans on shanking you the moment you give an opportunity, the problem is once you shank you must have an escape plan because your disguise is taken off. Spy's can also plant sappers which drain a sentry's HP and kill it, they can do this while staying cloaked though, it's a good idea to fake being an engineer and dot his as few will suspect you, obvious some classes you don't wanna fake, like a medic because you can't use the healer gun and will be found immediately. As I was saying though it's a very complex and balanced game much more than I would have ever hoped for, with Crysis coming out soon and my previous love of FFXI and the new expansion between these three games there will be no way i'll ever be bored again. One additional tidbit from Valve, is that they're thinking of creating another class later on, which if they do, adding onto the constant maps being created that are incredibly good, and beautiful looking, this game has significant replay value even on the same maps, just change the job you are and all of a sudden you're playing an entirely different game, very fun and I give it a perfect score, I am very glad they delayed almost a full year because it was WELL worth it, if i can i'll try to write some more about the other jobs, I just wanted to give a brief insight to the jobs that I found most different and interesting, I didn't even get to mention the uber charge ability of a medic, or the sniper rifle's charging shot that can insta-kill people, nor the critcal hits which make the game so much more dynamic.

The orange box is probably the best deal on any game you'll ever get, unless you steal it i guess, but legitimately this is the best offer you can ever hope to get. It's over $100 w/o the box as buying separately. I played through HL2:Ep2 the first night I got it and i was incredibly amazed, great lighting, improved graphics, not overusing the shine effect like so many games do now, it was just incredibly awesome and the storyline was just wow. The final battle was the best i've yet to see in any game, and my favorite of course is the interactions with npcs and how things respond. TF2 while i sadly don't get much time to play it, is hands down the best online fps out there and it's incredibly beautiful to look at, i'm glad i have a good rig for it just so I can play them all on max settings without lag, TF2 isn't anything like TFC it's an entirely new game, it feels clean and perfectly executed and all classes are a joy to play like the OP said, I've never gotten the feeling i should be this class to kill everybody like i did in TFC. It's more like "this situation calls for this class" and so you go for that class, and spy is infinitely more fun I get the extreme joy of watching my wife (who is far better than me) play spy and shank multiple people in the back, there's just no more fun or joy than seeing her shanking 6 people on the other team and they have no idea how that happened, then to go see her repeat that very same task time and time again. Hands down the orange box is the best, portal is awesome while a lil short it's a great tie in with the hl2 universe and it's incredibly funny in my opinion.

I fully agree with the need to list this because so many people are putting down Vista that those who may want it turn away because of fear. I built a new rig and put vista on, and i can tell you right now, that having done RAID on both Vista and XP OS installs and start ups, there is NOTHING as good as Vista's natural support, fdd are entirely obsolete for the most part imo, i didn't even buy one for my new computer, seemed like a huge waste of money to me. I ended up just getting what i wanted and everything i needed. I didn't decide to dual boot because honestly i didn't wanna go through the trouble and a lot of other personal hang ups about it, but i use another HDD for xp, and having to setup RAID when i don't even use it for XP was beyond useless and retarded that it took me quite some time to find an old working FDD lying around and plug it in then install windows because it didnt' wanna work without the RAID controllers from the mobo. Vista ont he other hand runs much faster than XP (i mean if you have a crappy rig, it'd be stupid to upgrade and most people i see complaining don't have an up-to-date / good rig to adequately supply vista with what it uses, sure it uses more than it should but i personally like what i get in return and have noticed no degradation in pc/game performance) and it has a handful of features i love. Personally the way you navigate folders and search is so superior to xp that i dread going on xp, which i have to for most of the time because the main game i play is FFXI and for some reason (more a gfx card issue) the 8800gtx won't work right with ffxi on vista, causes massive slow downs and such that many NVIDIA users are angry at them for. Though that's a bit off tangent i've never noticed any unsupported games that i've played having any problems. And i'll be honest I got vista for the future dx10, but hearing about dx10.1 kinda made me spaz a bit but yet again, that's a whole other hang up i have. Since forums are basically huge editorials i'm voicing my opinion for vista, i love the new design ease of use, and if the UAC really is that much of a problem just turn it off and get your own app to cover the firewall if you want that off too, really not that much of a problem and it's leaps ahead for security from XP. I use my own personal anti-virus and firewall that are the best in the game so far, and let defender do it's thing as well, and have noticed no issues. In fact my network speed and pings in games are around 15% lower in most cases, Team Fortress 2 runs supremely better, as does just about any other resource demanding application, supreme commander runs seamlessly, for those interested my setup is fairly simplistic and i'll list it below so that people don't think you can run vista perfectly without a hitch on some ancient set of equipment. CPU: 2.6ghz dual core (Lightly OC'ed myself to 3.2 steady at 32C w/ Eliminator Cooler) GFX: 8800GTX HDD: Dual seagates in RAID 0 for 600GB space total RAM: 2GB XMS Corsair MOBO: 680i NVIDIA The whole rig with keyboard mouse monitor etc cost just around 2,000 dollars, a good price by far in today's markets i'd say, for those who say they have no money to upgrade, really making your own computer and buying from retailers that don't stiff you on jacked up prices (hullotharbestbuy) and yet still don't have the best you need, is what fails most people, but if you buy from good retailers who have an idea of just what the hell they're doing then upgrading your computer or building a new one from scratch becomes incredibly simplistic and easy, and you have the satisfaction and joy of creating it yourself, knowing all the inner workings because you did them, and most of all knowing that you didn't have to pay that extra couple thousand (depending on who makes it) just to pay somebody else to make *your* computer which really isn't yours after somebody else makes it. Anyways sorry for the tangent/rant/craziness. The point I was getting across is that Vista hardly is as bad as people think it is, as for the FFXI thing for any of you who play, it should be fixed by the next expansion when they upgrade FFXI to DX9 from DX8.

I found a link after some digging and some preliminary info on fusion via wiki, take it with a grain of salt if you wish but they have a lot of sources up there for their info, since I suck at forums and knowing exactly how to do things properly i'll paste an excerpt from it which basically highlights the core as far as is known, still nothing yet on the intel though, and I apologize if i don't do this right. * Fusion is a heterogeneous multicore microprocessor combining a general purpose processing core(s) and basic graphics core(s) into one processor package, with different clocks for the graphics core and the central processing core * Four platforms focus on the four different aspects of usage o General Purpose o Data Centric o Graphics Centric o Media Centric * The codenamed Bulldozer processor cores, announced in AMD Technology Analyst Day July 2007, will be incorporated with GPU cores to form the first Fusion processors, codenamed the Falcon family, focusing on desktop market with TDP of 10 to 100 Watts. * An unnamed AMD Vice President expressed that Fusion can be implemented into mobile phones, UMPC and small multimedia devices, this has been further confirmed with the introduction of the codenamed Bobcat processor core focusing on low power consumption (1 to 10 Watts TDP) computations for handheld devices such as UMPC * The Fusion series processor will see new modular design methodology named "M-SPACE", such that design of future multi-core processors will have a wider range of combinations, as well as gaining enhanced flexibility, thus to minimize the architectural changes for different combinations of components. Benefitted from this initiative by AMD, graphics core can be changed without much re-design of the whole core * Fusion products will include at least 16 PCI Express (presumably version 2.0) lanes * The implementation of UVD in silica for full hardware decoding of MPEG2, VC-1 and H.264 video streams on supported softwares * The first Z-RAM design on a 45 nm fabrication process node was completed in 2006 together with the renewal of Z-RAM license, this is in coincidence with the process node that Fusion processors expected to be fabricated around the timeframe. This also conincide the AMD official roadmap for larger L3 caches after 2009, thus it was rumoured that AMD will likely to feature Z-RAM for larger L3 cache in Fusion products. * A new set of instructions and development libraries for Fusion were being developed, and was revealed to be a new iteration of SSE, named SSE5, which is announced on the August 30, 2007. * According to Dave Orton, Fusion will have 10% more pins than a "normal CPU" but he failed to further elaborate on what is a "normal CPU". * Expected to come in 2008 to 2009 to replace the AMD Turion 64 X2 mobile processor for laptops. Speed increase There is to be an expected speed increase with the Fusion. Because the GPU and CPU will be on the same die, information transfer between the CPU and GPU/GPU memory will significantly increase since there will be no need for the information to travel on a bus as there is with current motherboards (resulting in the GPU able to shunt far more data than on the PCI Express bus, due to significantly larger amounts of bandwidth available). EDIT: Found some info scarce but some at least about the intel version of the fusion, as far as it's knownt hey have not codenamed or admitted anything, though they have severely hinted at going in that direction. A few links will be listed below as sources. Source 1: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ From the first source it seems pretty clear that intel is trying to keep up with AMD and ATI's merger, but everybody already has a pretty good idea that this near secretive acquisition will not be enough to compete directly and if intel doesn't do something soon AMD will come back on top with their new architecture design and innovation. It would seem only a merger of NVIDIA and Intel would truly be enough to put them both on equal playing grounds, and while NVIDIA is a big catch and very expensive piece, Intel is likely the one company that could pull it off. Considering that NVIDIA is now competing directly with Intel for chipset graphics and the like, it would seem almost as if they are telling Intel that they won't sit idly by. Smart move on NVIDIA's part because hopefully Intel will realize it's best in the long run to take over NVIDIA and that way the two companies can mutually prosper and benefit from each other, much like how AMD and ATI are. However this would likely weaken Intel much like it did to ATI and AMD while the merger went through and all the shifting around happened, but there's no doubt that both companies would greatly prosper together than they can apart. With NVIDIAs foray into muilti-core gpus Intel really could give them a boost tot heir performance and ability, and since GPUs are seeing a greater shift to generalized purposes both would prosper and benefit as well, I also have a link to a neat article about the progression of cpus and gpus and how we're currently at the many core stage for cpu, and the general purpose gpu stage for gpus. Thought they were fun reads and technology never ceases to amaze me, something new and different everyday, and I absolutely love to read about it. If anybody else has any new info lemme know i'd be more than glad to hear it. Source 2: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Source 3: https://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/31 Source 4: http://analysto.com/blog/2007/09/24/nvidiaintelgpu-vs-cpu/

The recent computer advancements have really astounded me too. Just like the holographic storage media that they'll be using soon in place of dvds blu rays etc, and likely they'll use the same type of reading for hard drives stopping most of the wear and tear due to moving parts, and the main issue of RPM speed. If it wasn't for that HDDs would last a lot longer and would no longer be limited by the speed and size of the hdd. Which would also allow for huge amounts of storage. I'm honestly quite sure that a Terrabyte will be the norm in about 5-10yrs. I'm more looking into the exponential future increase of the cores of processors, I'm glad it's going away from pure mhz races since that was heading nowhere fast. Though the main problem I see is that hardware is moving so fast, that software is just now being able to utilize dual cores, quad cores are still not fully utilized even near the amount they should be. I understand why people would think that quad cores aren't worth it yet, they're still faster but really not wholly utilized yet, although it's nice that they're the same socket type so when they are fully utilized and worth the cash spent you can buy one, and plug it in just as easily. I'd love to see more cores, and alleviating dependency on bigger and better graphics cards because that in itself is just getting incredibly ridiculous. I'm interested in learning more about the fusion processor and the intel counter-part of that, I don't really remember the name, if anybody has a link i'd really appreciate it.

It seems like the same to me honestly, but I'm also a huge SC fan and I would love to be able to play one that doesn't look...well let's face it the old starcrafts look like crap compared to today's RTS games. I would definitely hope that they have the same gameplay and that not a lot has changed, I sometimes hate how RTS are so scatter-brained now with how you have to perform so many duties at once, starcraft was always more fun as you had plenty to do, but it never to the point that it was staggering or down right stupid to make that many tasks you need to do all at once basically. Then again maybe that's just me, but I really can't wait for this to come out.

For those of you out there like me who have both XP and Vista, and already know how to tweak your XP for maximum performance and aesthetic value, but are as clueless as can be on how to do the same in Vista, I found some extremely good tweaks for those people out there and I'll be listing them below, some of these I gathered from various websites and consolidated them into this thread for easier use of navigation rather than looking over tons of googled queries and such, I hope this helps some of you the way it's helped me. The following are mainly speed tweaks while the aforementioned were tweaks ot make things not only better but also more ease of use. Notice from rvalkass: Copied from here and here. Anything you copy must be in QUOTE tags.