Father Xmas

Pando is used by a number of F2P MMOs to install the game. I notice STO uses it as well (well had to try it). But CoH isn't one of them, yet.

Peter, the living adult Peter, disappeared from both universes when he was connected to the machine. It's just that since he was missing from Walternate universe anyways there wasn't as much change there.

As for what seems to be a face heel turn in Nina Sharp don't forget that Bell was the advocate for developing a fighting force against the other universe and Olivia was the most promising candidate. Without Peter, the favor for saving Peter, etc. the ZFT group wasn't thwarted as often if at all. And it kind of makes sense if they got funding via Massive Dynamics covertly, since both are working to defeat their alternate universe.

I think Smith's Doctor tries to bury all the guilt and angst under his over the top zaniness. Let's not forget the Dreammaster (or whatever he was called) had a lot of selfloathing.

And I never considered Amy to have a crush on the Doctor. She's the kind of woman who can spot guys who get uncomfortable around women who aggressively flirt with him. Plus from the Doctor's perspective she was just a 7 year old and a woman scheduled to get married the next day. Plus he had all that "Who was River Song to him" knowledge pestering him as well.

I think the current Who under Moffet is a lot more funny then RDF's. Funny isn't bad. I appreciate all the humorous asides from Rory and Amy as well as The Doctor's over the top wackiness to distract from the impending doom he is trying to avoid. And I really enjoy this Doctor when he is around children. Very "Cat in the Hat".

I haven't seen anything like that beyond the "submit anonymous usage stats" checkbox in the launcher, which I don't have checked.

Don't forget Ridia is currently F2P so roll a lot of alts isn't really an option right now.

Yes, during the low levels your initial array of opponents in Atlas are varies magically empowered gangs and the villain opposing force of Arachnos. Once upon a time you also faced reanimated through science Vaz and the mechanical metal filching Clockworks but I out leveled Atlas on my newest alt before I notice if they are still around. You do run into them on the streets of Kings Row along with the mutating Lost.

Is it me or does anyone else miss the old 5 + 5 contact system in Paragon?

IIRC neither helps much or at all. While SLi and CrossfireX are in theory seamless ways to boost performance, there are a few design issues you need to avoid in the rendering code to get the most out of it. On top of it the game uses OpenGL instead of Direct3D for rendering and OpenGL simply doesn't get as much attention from nVidia and AMD's driver developers.

But I may be wrong. The game engine has been tweaked in recent history and maybe multi GPU rigs are seeing a performance boost beyond raising minimum frame rate.

I would look at DDR3-1600 memory. The Cas 9 ones are similarly priced (within $5).

The Hyper 212 EVO is the "new and improved" version of the 212 Plus. They've basically flattened the heat pipes so there isn't any filler aluminum block between them where the heatsink contacts the CPU.

Two countries separated by a common language. It's not just sticking the letter u in some words (or striking it, depending on your country of origin).

Your hard drive is really really full (7% free). It's likely that the game files are extremely fragmented and may be affecting performance to the point of instability or at the very least very slow disk access. Even windows gets a little cranky once you drop below 15% free. I use Auslogics Disk Defrag, it's quicker than the Windows one and you can choose just to defrag a folder. I would also look into using CCleaner to tidy up before running a defrag.

Would like to see a Hijack This report to see what stuff you have loaded in the background. Also did you run the CoHHelper with the game or other memory hogging app loaded because using 1.5GB of memory with just a browser up in XP seems high.

Graphic settings look reasonable.

So how many of the nominees were only shown in the last week of 2011 with the minimum theaters (six nationwide I think) to qualify? How many were only shown in limited release at "art house" theaters? And they wonder why the Oscars no longer get the TV ratings it once did.

As for Transformers being nominated, like most blockbuster SciFi only in the technical categories. Don't get me wrong, I don't think it should have qualified for any of the major categories, it's just that on occasion a effects heavy film do have great performances and are routinely shortchanged.

I'm strangely reminded of the mouse organ sketch from Monty Python for some reason.

I moved out here over 15 years before I started playing here, primarily for the dark skies (I'm also an amateur astronomer), 7 years before I built my first PC from scratch.

There was a time where there were quarterly computer shows with dozens of small shops selling everything from CD audio cables to complete systems. This was back in the day when Computer Shopper was over an inch thick, Windows 3.1 just arrived and UPS drivers hated all the large heavy cow spotted boxes they were delivering. The unleashing of the Internet with Netscape/Win 95 basically killed the shows, Gateway is now owned by Acer and Shopper is now just another web site with really old articles.

That's more of a response/protest to Megaupload/MegaVideo getting seized/owners arrested.

As for tricking people on the Internet, see Nigerian Princes.

There isn't a Fry's or Microcenter within 500 miles of where I live. They aren't in my state or the states adjacent to mine or the states adjacent to those.

All I have locally (<50 miles) are Mom and Pop shops, a large computer refurbishers (want to buy a Core 2 based machine, they have a couple of pallets of them) and Best Buy/Staples/Office Depot. We don't even have an Office Max in that radius.

This highlights more than anything how vaguely legislation is written and how many examples of unintended consequences can be shown once you get programmers and engineers involved.

A few years back my state passed some law about outdoor burning. It was so vague that the boy scout camp couldn't light camp fires and fire departments couldn't do training with sample fires.

As for SOPA/PIPA, if defeated it will be tried again like the various "protect the children from the Internet or video games" laws that keep getting churned out then thrown out. You can't put the Genie back into the bottle. The Internet, once bandwidth has reached the levels we have today, is kicking to many existing business models in the junk and it's not just the RIAA or MPAA but network television, radio and cable monopolies. Society is moving from a passive "take what we offer, when we offer it" model to an on demand "I want to see/hear this now" model. Face it there are decades of infrastructure build around these old business models and unless they learn to adapt, they will only encourage people to use pirate sites to provide their entertainment their way.

Attempts in the past to provide what people are craving, Hulu and Netflix for example, have become too successful for their own good. Network TV is now shying away from hosting the last X episodes on Hulu or having a ridiculous delay, because it affects a shows ratings which is how a current show's success is determined. Netflix is going to be charged a ridiculous amount to stream content because the content owners felt they weren't getting a big enough cut while broadband providers, many cable, are capping the downloads so people won't drop cable.

There is simply too much money involved in entertainment industries and the other businesses built on them to convince them to give up, or at the very least try to understand what the Internet is and how to craft legislation that isn't as vague.

This is all to preserve the existing entertainment business models that have evolved over nearly a century.

Can't wait to see the mischief that "matter compilers" ala The Diamond Age will do.

If you read the article closer you would notice that the office apps are running on the app companies central server and all the app does is pass user input to the central server running virturalized Windows 7 instances and displays essentially screen updates.

Typing text and handling popups and pull down menus is a bit less dynamic, by an order of magnitude or three, than a 3D game like CoH.

It got updated today. Always problems for some when it updates itself, either renaming issues or firewall issues.