CobraA1

Reply to What do you think about LucasArt terrible excuse for not having The Force Unleashed on PC? in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

I can (and I have) easily build a rig that is competitive with an Xbox 360 for well under $2000. I might even be able to do it in the $1000 dollar range. A $4000 machine would completely demolish the 360. [quote]Suey believes that developing the game to reach a more mass market will hinder the potential of killer rigs.[/quote] Suey believes wrong. It's entirely possible to create a game that scales its settings to fit the rig it's running on. Everything on a computer can be det

Reply to Will America always be a superpower? in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Furthermore, if the United States indeed has such a strong economy as you said, if indeed it is the most powerful nation in the world (economically) - then why does it import more than it exports?[/quote] Because we have a lot of money and we want a lot of goods. I don't see importing/exporting as the best way to measure an economy. [quote]True superpowers dont need friends in the long run[/quote] I would disagree. Friendships are beneficial, and help immensely

Reply to Will America always be a superpower? in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Can someone clarify how exactly is the US a superpower at the moment?[/quote] Well, during the cold war, there were two superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union. Each one of us built up enormous supplies of both nuclear and conventional weapons, and there is no question we had the largest militaries in the world. The Soviet Union eventually collapsed, leaving the USA as the remaining superpower. Each one of us had large enough nuclear supplies to wipe the world out seve

Reply to Will America always be a superpower? in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]If it is happening to you, it is a recession If it is happening to me it is a depression[/quote] Thanks for the correction - looks like I'm going to have to pull out my accounting book to ensure the correct usage of terms. I'll do my best to be more careful. [quote]One of the assumptions I made was that money in the bank is like money buried in a field. Which is nonsense . . .[/quote] Of course it's nonsense. It's an extremely liquid asset. It can be easily

Reply to Turning off your computer in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]If you can enable it, "hibernate" is a much safer bet. [/quote] Hibernate is basically equivalent to turning it off, except that the memory and state is saved to the harddrive before it is turned off. Standby saves power instead of turning it completely off. Vista's "sleep" is a hybrid of hibernate and standby. It saves the harddrive to the disk in case of power failure, then enters standby. The technical community mostly agrees that if it's in use daily, ke

Reply to Will America always be a superpower? in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]If suddenly all the citizens start saving most of their money, they are not going to keep buying, thus demand would lower, thus prices would lower, thus the Trend would change drastically.[/quote] As I've said, I'm not asking people to hoard most of their money. I'm just asking people to maintain a positive balance and to have a small portion of money set aside for a rainy day or retirement. I do not think that saving a small percentage of income and getting out of debt

Reply to The power of the consumer - copy protection in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]But most game developers do not have that luxury and nearly every game I play I wish I could buy more content for rather than the current role of "one or two big expansion packs and that's it". [/quote] Not just that, but the support time for a game from major publishers is getting shorter and shorter it seems. This drives me crazy. A publisher creates a game, supports it for a few months, and then completely stops everything, including bug fixes. I'm sorry, but I'm sick

Reply to Will America always be a superpower? in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

SpacePony: Thanks for the clarification. If I'm reading the Wikipedia correctly, in 1945 the great depression was over, and the nation was recovering. So this is when our economy was doing pretty well. So, in light of what you've said, it does appear that Carbon016 may be mistaken, and that we experienced this trend towards constant debt only recently. It's not intrinsically part of our economy by default, and our economy has done very well during times when people were saving

Reply to Will America always be a superpower? in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]While debt does kill personal wealth, it is what the modern economy thrives on.[/quote] How so? [quote]it's great to save but if people saved like you are advocating modern financial systems would collapse. [/quote] How so? I am not talking about hoarding money and never spending it. I'm just saying maintain a certain balance, and spend anything above that balance. I would agree that hoarding and never spending is rather pointless. Unless it's

Reply to Will America always be a superpower? in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]If any country is likely to be run by corporations in 50 years, it's China, not the United States.[/quote] Well, they are communist, and people often forget some of the meanings that underlie that word. One of the core concepts of communism is that the government controls the means of production. With this philosophy, it's very heavily weighted towards government control, and the corporations have very little power. I would agree, however, that China does not hold much p

Reply to New copy protection comming for Spore and Mass Effect (EA) in PC Gaming GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]SecuROM[/quote] Quite possibly the worst DRM company. Ever. I've had nothing but troubles with their products, even though I have never pirated any of their software or the software they protect. Now it looks like they've made their products even worse. I'm sorry, but I'm not a criminal. I shouldn't be treated like one. [quote]Honestly, how often is you internet down?[/quote] Sometimes I have been away from the Internet for more than a month. I'm a depe

Reply to What I think could happen to the US in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

DrathKar: [quote]US doesnt commit warcrimes? http://deoxy.org/wc/warcrime.htm[/quote] Couldn't find the evidence to back up this person's claims. While I have not done an exhaustive search, neither a search for key words nor a quick scan of the 1977 Geneva Protocols reveals that the types of weapons used were illegal. http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/7c4d08d9b287a42141256739003e636b/f6c8b9fee14a77fdc125641e0052b079 In addition, the claim about vio

Reply to Piracy & PC Gaming in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Linux laptop gamer to be exact.[/quote] What games do you have? Why not play the games in Windows? [quote]the noCD cracks mean I don't need to cart around my game collection with me just because I fancy firing up on the train, plane or friends house.[/quote] This is why I like Stardock Central and Steam. I think they show where gaming is going in the future. [quote]Look, I understand that console gamers are really impressed with 'uber l33t graphics' bu

Reply to Piracy & PC Gaming in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]The reason many prefer the PC is that is has other uses as well, not just gaming, but it's basically a shiny tool box with a lot of different uses.[/quote] I'll have to agree with this - no matter what, I'll still need a PC for word processing, online banking, image editing, writing software, etc. So no matter what, I have a PC, whether I decide to buy a console or not. The PC is much better suited for general purpose computing, while the console specializes in games. Si

Reply to Will Thermobaric weapons replace nuclear weapons? in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]But if it gets more powefull it would be a problem.[/quote] Possibly. But then again, how easy is it to scale it up? The whole reason why nuclear weapons can become so powerful so easily is because of the whole the chain reaction thing. We've actually developed conventional weapons that are this powerful. I think the point of this particular weapon is to create a huge pressure wave, not to make bigger explosions in general. It sounds a bit more specialized, and would pro

Reply to What I think could happen to the US in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Fact USA actions have resulted in deaths of Innocent people/non combatants(whatever you want to call them) Every Year since ww2[/quote] Fact: Nearly every war ever fought, including the "cold" war, has resulted in the deaths of innocent people. Whether innocent people die is not in question: It's whether the war was justified in the first place that is in question. [quote]because if something happens consistantly and repeatedly its logical to assume its going to

Reply to The existence of for-pay stuff doesn't hurt you in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Oh, I don't think StarDock has done so in the past. But past behavior is ultimately no guarantee of future behavior.[/quote] In the case of Stardock, anything that Frog says is the future ;). Being that they're not publicly traded, they're not slaves to people who want their money but probably never bought a Stardock product in their life, AKA Public Stock Holders. [quote]Not angry. Just busy so fewer fluff words between statements.[/quote] :LOL: I want that on

Reply to What I think could happen to the US in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

#1: Doubt it. We've had a worse economy (think the great depression), and we've fought larger wars (think the world wars). People who whine about Iraq usually conveniently forget about our history. Frankly, the war in Iraq boils down to whether Saddam was really dangerous or not, and how we handled Iraq after Saddam was defeated. Most of the other things people talk about is, IMHO, a red herring. #2: Not likely. We may have our military all over the place, but when is the last

Reply to Can you identify where to change these Vista colors? They're a complete mystery to me! in SkinStudio Stardock Forums

For one thing, Skype and Firefox both have their own skinning engines - and when software uses its own skinning, if often doesn't work well with WB or SKS. Those menu borders in Skype are controlled, believe it or not, by the button face color. It doesn't make sense at all, I know, but often applications that have custom skins break all of the conventions for where to use the colors.

Reply to AVG Free 7.5 is no more..... in Personal Computing GalCiv2 Forums

I've always liked AVG, and I'm using the paid version. I hate hearing about the email stuff being limited to 30 days, but I suppose they want to push people a bit harder to get their paid version. After all, they are a business, and it costs them money to create their software. It's very cheap - I only pay once every two years. I pay more to Stardock for all of the software and games I buy through them. I would [b]much[/b] rather you search for free versions of other a

Reply to Someone Out There? This issue should be easy to solve.... in SkinStudio Stardock Forums

[quote]I'm looking to modify the background color, highlight colour and the font for both viewed and non-viewed items in the start bar and programs panel, and everything else, like control panel, for the classic start menu... for windows XP pro[/quote] I think the classic Start Menu color is simply the "buttons" or "menu" colors. I forget which. It's likely that it's based on one of the common colors, so if you change it, it'll change the color in a lot of other places. Getting

Reply to Office 2007 not skinned? in WindowBlinds Stardock Forums

I've seen the Windows 3.11 skin change the color of the office icon in the upper left corner - I don't know how the author did it, though.

Reply to Icon Packager messes up icons for file types in Object Desktop Stardock Forums

Found where the icon cache is (.AppData) and ran SFC. A restart later, I'm doing great. Seriously - check the program for compatibility before installing it, and check any system files you change for compatibility before replacing them.

Reply to BootSkin - not being maintained anymore? Is there a replacement? in Object Desktop Stardock Forums

Okay. I'm fine just changing the login screen :).

Reply to Icon Packager messes up icons for file types in Object Desktop Stardock Forums

Same here - except that since I'm running 64 bit Vista, I can't get into IP at all to do all of the rebuild stuff :(. Help?!