VT-Vincent

Thanks everyone, it's great to be here. I have been a member for quite a while but I look forward to contributing to 1Emulation!

Very nice, I like the new layout a lot. The new theme also looks great!

Wow Emsley, I'm really sorry to hear about that... I have known one or two people to really go ballistic and make some nasty threats but they never actually followed through like that thankfully. Truer words have never been spoken.

It depends on the particular issue, but in some cases such as a liquid spill or a faulty capacitor a visual inspection can easily determine the motherboard is at fault. For more subtle problems like hard lockups, kernel panics, etc. it is usually a process of elimination. The first thing to do is determine if it is indeed a hardware problem. To do that, you would ideally run another operating system on the computer such as a Linux boot CD or a clean install on another hard drive to rule out any potential software issues. Once software is eliminated, you have to move on to the hardware. Tools like the Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) make it easy to run diagnostics on both the hard drive and RAM to rule them out. After that, it's on to the video card (if it is non-integrated) and power supply. The easiest method to test both of them is to swap them out one-by-one. If the issue still persists after ruling out all other hardware, the motherboard is the only thing left. There are of course exceptions to this, but they are not common. Some of the other potential problems that could look like a motherboard issue are RAM compatibility issues, memory and CPU timings in the BIOS and user-configured voltage settings in the BIOS for motherboards that support them. On most retail-purchased machines, these are non-issues as the manufacturer's BIOS doesn't provide this level of customization. On a custom-built gaming system though, this is usually the first place to look for potential problems.

I wouldn't worry about cookies. The most important thing is running an alternative browser like Chrome or Firefox as they aren't exploited nearly as much as IE. If you are worried about cookies and other temp files though, you can set most browsers to dump all of them on exit. The downside is a lot of banking sites will require you to re-register your computer with them every time and websites won't be able to save any preferences. I'd steer clear of any anti-spyware products as well. Half of them either are spyware or just try to scare you into buying a full product that really doesn't do much. Most reputable AV manufacturers include spyware definitions in their clients like Symantec, Sophos, Kaspersky, etc.

Since ice cream is more solid even in it's melted form, you are probably fine if nothing happened yet and you cleaned up the residue. The worst that might happen down the line is a sticky keyboard which can be replaced pretty easily. Usually the hard drive is fine even in pretty bad spills, it's typically the motherboard and fans that get the worst of it. Since I am a technician I actually see this more than I'd like to. My personal favorite is when someone comes in with a computer reeking of coffee or with liquid dripping out the bottom and "no idea what happened... it just, uh... stopped working."

The worst thing about it here is how everyone is trying to take credit for it. Democrats think this is all thanks to President Obama, the republicans think it couldn't have happened without President Bush and others say it's all thanks to the military. The problem is that everyone has overlooked the true hero who made this all possible: http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/04/how-c...ter-get/?hpt=C2

The way it was announced was pretty strange. I remember my twitter feed going crazy with "The President is about to make an emergency address to the nation" about an issue of "national security" and none of the news outlets knew what it was about. My first thought was who'd we bomb or who was about to bomb us. After that, the news leaked the whole thing before the address. I really can't blame anyone for being happy about this. You can't compare celebrating his death to those who celebrated the slaugher of thousands of innocent civilians. He was a mass murderer and one of the worst villains this world has seen.

Actually, I remember reading somewhere that the wedding is expected to generate a couple billion in tourist revenue. If that's the case, it's not such a bad thing. I'm just tired of reading about it, The Daily dedicated an entire section to it for this week. I have to admit though, the "Black Sheep of the Royal Family" piece was an interesting read.

I'll probably try this and Sonic Colors when they eventually hit the bargain bin. Both games look promising but I'm well past the days of paying $50 for any Sonic title.

So... does Sega actually invest any money in game development these days or does it just go to their FMV team?

I think the main reason our media ignores the UK's problems is because they basically mirror our own. Right now, most states are in a budget crisis and are making similar cuts to what you've described - education, law enforcement, etc. Just here in Pennsylvania, our new governor has decided to do a massive budget cut on education. This is resulting in a lot of teachers getting laid off, schools getting shut down and college tuition to state-funded schools is going to skyrocket. Even the City of Pittsburgh itself has made some big cuts including the mass-transit system. My town is about 20 miles from the city and they pretty much cut all bus service out here. There are a lot of people who can't afford cars working at minimum wage jobs who are going to loose their jobs and be dependent on public assistance now. The only thing that hasn't happened here yet has been any major tax hike. We pay a yearly income tax to the local, state and federal governments which has remained relatively unchanged and there is a 7% sales tax on most store purchases (excluding necessaries like milk, bread, toilet paper, etc.). The tax outside of my county is actually lower, it is only 6% outside of Allegheny county. Supposedly these cuts are enabling us to keep the taxes where they are. To be honest though, I would be willing to take a slight tax increase if it meant stopping this state from falling apart. Jobs are an issue here as well. One of the biggest problems is that most low-tier jobs are only willing to hire employees in as part-time. They are limited to 30 hours per week or less, most of them hover around 25 hours so they don't risk going over 30. As part-time employees, they are not entitled to health care benefits at most companies. While these jobs might be fine for a college student or someone with a real job looking to make a little extra money, there is no way to support yourself on $8/hr at 25 hours per week.

To be honest, the only real coverage I've seen regarding the UK in our media is the non-stop gossip about Prince William's wedding.

Sorry to hear that, I know how hard loosing a pet can be. Just last year I had to have my cat Shadow put to sleep, it was one of the hardest things I've had to do.

Ouch, Apple's products are considered pretty expensive compared to their competition here in the US but that pricing is outlandish.

They handle it with well designed heatpiping, speed throttling and variable speed fans. This is the same thing other manufacturers do to get the i7 into laptops and other small form factor devices. To be honest, it's not much of a challenge to cool. I'm sure the old G5 iMacs were much more difficult to engineer since the processor ran so hot they couldn't even use it in their laptop line. I'm assuming Apple only uses one cooling solution per model and as such it is probably designed to meet the thermal threshold of the highest CPU option offered in that model. I haven't heard of overclocking on a Mac before though since they use an EFI instead of a conventional BIOS. It may be possible with third-party utilities and if it is, you could probably do some slight overclocking on one of the lower CPU options. I wouldn't try it on the highest CPU they offer in that model though as it would probably exceed the cooler's capabilities.

Really don't spend any time with my family since they are crazy so I don't really celebrate Christmas either. It's a good day to get all of the housework I've been neglecting done.

I've been running MS Security Essentials on all of my computers for the last year or so. It hasn't nagged me much and doesn't seem to cause any noticeable performance hit. Both fortunately and unfortunately I haven't had a virus in years so I really can't speak to it's effectiveness.

There's also another option - you could take many of the less active forums and set them to read-only within an archive category/parent. From there, new forums could be created with the new structure. That way the content is still there for anyone who wants to read it and if a project comes back to life or the forum becomes relevant again, it can be reactivated.

Now that he is under arrest, it will be interesting to see where they go from here. If I'm not mistaken, the US government hasn't formally charged him with anything yet.

Geez... that's giving me flashbacks to last year's Snowmaggedon. So far we've only gotten flurries and less than an inch on the ground. The forecast is we might get up to two inches tonight. I really don't want to see snow this early...

I've always bought WD and they have had their ups and downs. For the most part, all of my internal WD drives have been reliable. The externals are another story though, I had a 320GB MyBook die after a couple of years and I had three 500GB DVR Expanders. Two of the three expanders died and I sold the last one before it had a chance to. I've also found their external enclosures to be cheaply made and extremely loud. The 320GB MyBook actually caused a noticeable vibration when I had it sitting on my desk. I usually buy hard drives in sets of two - one to store the data on and another to back it up to. Luckily, they have gotten cheap enough that it's feasible.

I had a Ponderosa thanksgiving buffet then went out at 1:30am to wait in a black friday line at the local Best Buy. The weather was terrible, 35 degrees and rain the whole time. By the time I got back, all of my clothes were soaking wet. On the plus side, I did get my $150 netbook and a new 32" TV for my bedroom.

If you can start it, it would probably be best to run it for a few minutes every couple of days just to keep the fuel lines and engine clean.

They were always good for a few laughs. I recall being featured on their site a few times as well.