Father Xmas

Sorry, someone posted this already, sometime before the 2nd half of the season started. Still funny.

I really wanted a scene between Tony and Janet at their first meeting which ends with Tony being stung across the room landing on his backside.

So we have a title. Call me when they've have a plot they are willing to share with the public.

I enjoyed Speed Racer and I don't care what they say now, Matrix was a one shot that due to it's success, like PotC, got turned into a trilogy that is inferior to the original.

Heard the rumor again about a Watchmen sequel.

Edit: Sadly it also looks like Neo Manhattan is about to explode. Damn, I thought it was already killed with fire.

True, you can't just have a red/orange band around the muzzle anymore to show that it's a toy, it's got to be colorful.

Of course that rule goes out the window with something like this.

I think people forget that now they've taken additional powers to replace the fitness ones as well as more powers to spread the same number of slots over.

Of course if you take an additional attack power or two you are going need to slot them up meaning something else will be losing a slot or two. I wouldn't be surprised if people gave up the endurance reduction slot before they would give up an accuracy, damage or recharge slot.

I guess vigilante is the new untapped genre. You could classify Burn Notice and Person of Interest in the same category.

I'm using the term overclock simply to compare the clock speeds of the 460 and 560.

When the GTX 460 came out, people found that you could actually overclock the card by, at the time, insane amounts. And when AMD came out with the HD 6850 at the same price point at the time, nVidia endorsed overclocking the GTX 460 up to 800MHz.

Now while the GPU in the 560 is a similar configuration (SPs, texture units, raster units) to the 460, it isn't the same chip and it's default speed is now 810MHz and uses faster memory. Of course that doesn't prevent manufactures from offering a GTX 560 running over 900MHz.

If you are going to be compressing a lot of video or you render a lot of ray traced 3D, then the 2600K may be worth it to you. In games, not so much.

AnandTech Bench

AA is anti aliasing, removing the jaggies on edges. Depending on the speed and bandwidth of the memory on the video card, the impact can be minor to extreme.

AO is ambient occlusion. It's soft shadowing caused when one object starts to block the ambient light from striking another object causing the blocked object to darken. The way this is done on a video card is very intensive compute wise, even at the lower settings.

Edit: Ultramode adds three additional graphics effects to the game. Reflections, primarily off of water but also some costume pieces and windows. Hard shadows, the kind cast from direct sunlight outside. And lastly Ambient Occlusion, which is a soft shadow or darkening caused by an object blocking a significant amount of the ambient light in the area, such as when one object is close to another.

Of the three, Ambient Occlusion is the most subtle of the three effects.

A lot better than one with an HD 4200.

The AMD A8-3850 is essentially a quad core Athlon II (including tweaks like a bigger L2 cache) with a built in HD 5570. However due to the fact the GPU shares system memory and has a lower clock speed than the HD 5570, it's performance isn't as good.

AnandTech

Sorry, I don't have any personal experience with this CPU/GPU combo but it would be the PC I would have recommended to my parents if it was available 3-4 months ago when they got their new system.

Well on paper (number of streaming processors, texture units, etc) the 560 is an overclocked (810/4008 Vs 675/3600) 1MB GTX 460 but uses a little bit less power.

The 560Ti is roughly 8-12% faster than the 560 (referencing techPowerUp's performance summary at 1920x1200 and 2560x1600).

Some 560's are overclocked to the point that their performance can catch up with the 560Ti.

TV show or at that time, 1/2 hour toy commercial.

Then run down to the toy store and then to the hardware store for some spray paint.

They can always add muzzle flashes in post.

There was a 2nd season. It originally ran on Discover (I think). It was apost-apocalyptic Survivor-like reality show.

Let's face it, you need to have practical skills that could be applied to the materials you have on hand. Someone who's a electrician, plumber, carpenter, mechanic is much more useful than someone who lacks those skills. Especially if they have a little MacGyver in them. After that it's all about being able to haul junk back to or around your camp to do the task for the day (build a water purifier, build a battery recharging station, etc.).

Unless you were a DIYer, home improvement or series hobbyist in those above skills, anybody who went to college for some nice office based white collar job is SOL unless they're also strong.

As for Doctors and nurses, unless they've done time working in 3rd world, dirt poor countries practicing, they may be next to useless unless they have a knack to improvise (HankMed).

It was an interesting idea for a reality show but various twists and projects weren't compelling enough for me to watch more than a handful of episodes each time.

That's nothing compared to what the new Three Musketeers looks like if the trailers are remotely accurate. All it's missing is a bullet time sequence.

See your thread on the Tech board for my answer.

Took me awhile to figure it out myself. Some call it WWD for Who Will Die.

Only downside with a GT 430 is that it's a 50 watt card. The PSU in that system, as far as I can tell is rated at 220 watts with 168 watts (14 amps) available at 12 volts. You should be OK but it's teetering on the edge of my PSU size comfort zone.

With that budget I wouldn't hesitate getting a 60-64GB SSD to use as a hard drive cache with Intel's Smart Response Technology on a Z68 motherboard.

Unless you have money to burn, I can't see going past a GTX 570. The GTX 580 is only 15-20% faster than a GTX 570 but for 40-50% more money. Doesn't seem like a good deal to me.

If you are talking about the integrated graphics on the AMD 785G desktop chipset, found in some store bought PCs like HP, it's surprisingly okay as long as you don't over do it graphic settings wise.

My folks have one in their HP quad core and it can run the game (no ultra mode, shadows as blobs) at 1k x 768 in a window with 0xAA, 4xAF at around 25fps blueside, faster inside indoor missions. That's with the graphics settings slider in the middle with DoF and bloom turned off and textures settings at max.

You can get UM reflections to work with a minor hit in frame rate but hard shadows, AO shadows or AA will kill performance totally.

I assume the laptop version is similar.

I'm betting the girl is with the hunter's family and the boy will be the McGuffin for the first half of the series, needing to find a proper doctor or drugs for him.

As someone suggested it's possible that some chemical agent was used and that's what killed everyone on that highway. May have even been an accidental spill caused by a zombie (truck carrying chemicals jackknifes trying to avoid what the driver thought was a person in the road). Or it could have blown in from a train derailment, chemical plant, etc.

... and how many zeroes will it take this time Mr. Hamill.

It's bytes per second to and from the server.

It happens in VIP as well if I use your first link. It appears that the link on the announcement page is now mostly correct and doesn't send you to nowheresville but into the middle of that thread.