Kwisatz

Oldschool is better: Run-D.M.C., Beastie Boys, etc... Seriously. The reason is that I like classic rock, and during hip-hop's infancy, everything was experimental; as such, much "borrowing" in instrumental style was done from other genres, most notably rock, which is why you have awesome songs like Rock Box and No Sleep Till Brooklyn, where a guitar or traditional rock instrument provides rhythm and/or does a solo.

CS:S pwns 1.6, hands down, but XFire blows. In about 2 weeks I'll be able to play CS:S again, so add me on aim and msn: immojiggity mo at jiggity dot org

Boston Van Halen The Scorpions The Cars J. Geils Band In order, my top 5.

My $1300 computer will last for ~4 years and play any of those games at at least low resolution, above 30 fps (given past performance). The reason computers are not as "powerful" as consoles is because computers differ in design, even if they use similar components, and as such, they must run a Hardware Abstraction Layer, which is Windows and the accompanying drivers, and that takes up memory and processor use. If you took a computer and programmed a game that ran exclusively on that hardware, it would outperform the console port of that game, hands down. In short, computers are "slower" becuase they need to run the game at the same time as Windows, drivers, etc.

Mmm maybe, I guess it depends on the band. Most mainstream artists are controlled by the record companies so you might get one or two good songs on a 12 track record. The bands I am in to are of much better quality and you really need to get the whole album. It tells a story, its a window into the mind of the lyricist. Yeah. Certain albums, especially older ones that were issued on vinyl originally have a sort of flow to it, and when they were re-released on CD they kept the cross-faded songs. As such, many of my tracks contain the end and beginning of the songs before and after them, especially Boston's albums, which you have to have in a whole, because they often revolve around a theme (space, life, etc.). Nowadays the only album I've seen that's remotely close to a concept album/rock opera is American Idiot, which blows, and it's really too bad. And while I'm on a roll, it seems that it's impossible to make good music today. Gone is prog rock, and there is no innovation; the majority of today's singers (most notably punk) sound the same, and have very similar guitar riffs. I haven't really heard an addictive foot-stompin' song in recent years (that was made recently). [/offtopic] Anyways, I don't use iTunes. It's virtually the same price, if not more expensive than buying a CD, especially iTunes is $.99 per song, and I can get a 15-track Def Leppard CD for $10 from the department store. Or, I just use http://mp3search.ru to get my music. Before everyone starts screaming at me for posting an illegal link, read this, which clearly cites US (I dunno about UK, etc.) laws and articles that clearly dictate and imply mp3search's legality.

OMGF OMFG OMGF !!! VIDEO ON TEH 2.5 INCH CULOR DISPLAy!!!! Seriously, the iPod was a decent MP3 player for it's class, I've yet to see anything that beats it in terms of reliability and features (the iPod mini/nano is a different story). But the iPod video is such a stretch. Who is going to watch videos on a 2.5" screen for 2 hours (if you're lucky)? This is Apple's biggest gimmick yet. Even iPod supporters have to agree that's absurd. But if I somehow missed an advantage this has over the iPod photo, then by all means, point out what makes this new, wider iPod so special. You want video, get a PVP.

It doesn't make sense to have a graphing calculator until you get into Algebra II; everyone I know had teachers who made them graph the graphs on graphing paper, and even now, we're reviewing graphing equations in Algebra II and we have to write the equations down. I suppose it might help on the SAT and such, but other than that, and the higher math classes, I see no reason for a graphing calculator. If I wanted to play games in class, I'd get a TI-84 shell and re-engineer my GBA to fit inside it :P. That way I can look like I'm using it.

Zen Micro Photo. http://creative.com/products/mp3/zenmicrophoto/ I know two people with Nanos, and one of them works fine, but the other one's screen is so damn scratched up it's not funny. But I don't own one so I don't know. However, I'd rather have twice the storage, more battery life and a bigger screen for the same price.

PLEASE keep in mind that it is not necessary to have a boyfriend/girlfriend at 14. What many of my friends do not understand is that it's not like an object; you have to actually be able to talk to and at least have some kind of common ground with the person you go out with and not just lust for their body, or date everyone within a little group you're in. I've been out with ONE person since the beginning of 8th grade (I'm a freshman too), and I have no regrets. I know at least two girls who like me, but quite honestly, they are not necessarily people whom I would like to associate with. Call me grown up, but that's just the way I feel. That, and my parents literally harass me about these kinds of things. For instance, I am good friends within a little group, which consists of Girls A, B, C, D, E, and F, and guys Me, A, B, and C. Guy A is my friend, and he has asked EVERY SINGLE GIRL OUT. As of yet, A has gone out with him, and B will go out with him after C is done going to homecoming with him. C knows about him dumping her after homecoming for B, and is just fine with it. I don't know about you, but I'm a very straightfoward person when it comes to emotions - I'm happy, pi[i[[/i]ssed, neutral, partying, nervous, or intellectual, and that's about it. I am quite tired of all this soap opera BS and all this "promiscuity," and it's not the way I think people my age should operate. So, in a nutshell, I am not really qualified to answer your question, as I don't date and dump in a week like many of my peers do, and I don't know about this whole friend/girlfriend thing being impossible, but I'll say this much - just wait and see what develops.

Toe typing =easy ^^ Done with big toe, very carefully.

Omg, I completely agree. I personally own an iPod mini (silver, 2nd gen) and I really like it. However, I wisshhhhh there was an iPod mini photo also. I want a colour screen, and was so mad when the mini's got replaced by the nano. I don't want an mp3 player THAT small, and the headphone ports at the bottom are just :x Dont get me wrong, the nano is cool, but just not for me. As for the "new ipods" (no name? just called the new ipod? wth?) I love them. Its another case of "you don't need it, but it could be useful" kind of things. I would love to have 30GB storage, but I dont really need it. I would love to have little movie clips on the iPod as well, and view pics. So I'm thinking about selling my mini and buying a "new ipod" As for the iPod haters out there....meh. My friend hated the iPod, and had an iRiver. He finally gave in and bought a nano. Now he loves it. People hate the iPod because its so popular, and they just want to be different. For me, and many others, the iPod does what it needs to do, and looks amazing while doing it, all at a decent price. If you can find me another mp3 player that looks nicer, is cheaper, and has amazing software support like iTunes, then ok. But I highly doubt it :? Good job Steve Jobs (no pun intended) AD :P It's not so much the iPod we hate, it's the fan club. Seriously, it seems that every single person I know who posses an iPod or an iPod mini is a spoiled rich kid who got it from their mummy or daddy who lives $20,000 above their income. And the sad part is that they load like 20 songs on it and then get a belt clip for it, then dance around to it, swinging their hips wildly and pointing it in the direction of the onlookers, as if their iPod is a status symbol to behold. The other thing is that people fill theirs with crap just so they can say they have like 5000 songs. I have about 320 songs, and 290 of those I know the lyrics and instrumentation to perfectly. I can lip sync, air guitar, drum, air-keyboard, etc. to all of them (while looking like a jackass at the same time :P), and most people just rip entire albums without question, just so they have a high song count. Another thing, too - they believe that simply because it is the highest-selling, it is perfect, will never break, and is the best all around. This is simply not true. For instance, I own a Creative Zen Micro and it works much better for me than the iPod mini. It has an FM tuner, it's compatible with subscription services like Napster, swappable battery, more intuitive interface (it seriously is. It's much like a PalmPilot in that it has a submenu button and a vertical control), as well as a clock, Outlook syncing, more space for the money, etc. Although the iPod may be more "reliable," I am yet to have any kind of problem, and I use all of the aforementioned features (with the exception of the Outlook and subscription service) regularly, and some of those things the iPod can't do or doesn't have. An analagous example is the VHS vs. Beta war. Beta had superior picture and sound, but VHS won out because the licensing rights to Beta were hoarded by Sony (I think it was Sony). However, with the iPod and other MP3 players, it's not with licensing rights, it's with consumer blindness and unwillingness to research other options. Whenever anyone uses my player at school, they say "Wow, why doesn't the iPod have any of this stuff?" despite the fact a few of those people claimed that it was an "iPod wannabe" a few minutes earlier. And, about the fourth-gen iPod - who is going to watch video on a screen that small? A PSP seems slightly understandable, as it's almost WVGA resolution and fairly big, but a 2.5" screen? No thanks. That seems so incredibly pointless. I suppose you could hook it up to a television, but who's going to carry the dongle, and couldn't you just load video files onto an iPod and play them on a computer anyway? It just seems like it's a gimmicky waste, but that's just me.

lol will any1 eva even need 7800GT SLI ?? thats overkill but good for showing off :P now u only need a clear case now :D What people don't understand is that although a lower-quality video card will run everything all right, if you have a higher-power one, it will be longer until it becomes obsolete and you have to replace it. Just keep that in mind. Given Moore's Law, this computer I just bought for $1300 will do every task I throw at it reasonably well until I get to college, as opposed to having to spend $900 twice just to have a decent computer in 4 years' time.

Screw the SLI 6800s and get a 7800GTX, or better yet, a 7800GTX in SLI, if you REALLY need it. I just got an SLI mobo with a 7800GT so I can just buy a second one and upgrade that way. (Too bad I can't assemble the damn comp yet...)

Bring Up My Post (please) I have reconfigured it. I retained many of the original parts, but tacked on a few goodies like a TV tuner, cold cathode, LED fans, and a better video card. I also changed it to all-Newegg so they can't pull anything about non-compatibility or it being another company's fault. I am likely ordering this configuration in two days' time. I would appreciate anything you could tell me that would allow me to maximize my bang-for-the-buck. As usual, I am a filthy redneck American, so all prices are in USD.

Trust me...lots of girls "dig" glasses. Just keep them clean, though. Thats what turns them off. Plus, guys with glasses who wear contacts look goofy for a while, because of our wierd tan lines :P =\ I have a red mark where my pads come in contact with my nose No tan lines, that's only really for people with transition lenses/sunglasses 8) And I agree with what Bari said, your glasses are just a part of you and think what you would do if you saw someone wearing glasses? Do you automatically think Loser Geek!!!!! Thought so :P Some people look better with glasses anyway :P. Because they've had them for so long or because their face is a bit fat or distorted-looking without them.

You need to have some kind of social connection to a group which has connections to a desirable girlfriend. I used to be kinda like you (still am too) but I got in the same kind of crowd as my friend did. We all go to movies and skating and such, and eventually you'll find friends or acquaintances (sp?) you can ask out. Then just be yourself and don't screw up (ie don't hunch at your first slow dance. :P ). But don't try too hard either, because then you'll end up being really akward. And don't be afraid if she is really clingy and you're not, because that bit will come naturally, and is O.K. so long as it leads to nothing more...serious (unless you're in for that sort of thing). Pretty much all I can say. But if you're like really shy and have ZERO friends at all, and people make fun of you, then all I have to say is you're screwed until you move. :( Sorry about that.

I found this really neat concept that allows you to control LEDs and powered lights from your computer using a Winamp plugin. I'd seen stuff like this with MIT's LED dancefloor and such, but I've never seen something that's actually cool enough and inexpensive enough for cheap bastards like me to build...until now. Enter DiscoLitez. I actually spent 10 bucks and built a small 8-light LED rig that words quite well. If you turn off the lights it looks real awesome. If anyone else builds one of these, post some pics or something (phone is charging). This is soooooo going into my new comp case!

See how often you keep biking places after you're old enough to drive (you're 14?). But you save 5 minutes of your life and waste a good 32 cents of gas when you drive instead of walk, in the example I mentioned (assuming your car gets 20 mpg; half of us "American Idiots" have gigantic SUVs that protect us from our own "horrible driving"). In fact, let's do a cost analysis. If you eat there every day, then you will save 32 cents of gas / day, and burn about 90 per day bicycling. That's $116.80 saved and ~9.3 pounds lost per year. Sounds like a win-win to me. If you don't at least try that sometime, then you're just be downright lazy.

I don't drive, but what I do bicycle. And what I find funny is that perfectly fit people choose to drive 5 minutes to a restaurant rather than bike 12. Literally, there is a really popular pizza place like 5 minutes by car away from my house. My friends and I bike up there on weekends to eat lunch. We lose 20 minutes, but we get more exercise in, and we save fuel. It's little things like this that will add up and prolong our world's oil supply.

I have integrated sound on the mobo. And I had them for a while too, and they kick [wagon] for what they cost.

Because even if I was a millionare I could think of enough things I'd rather invest in than paying twice the price for not near twice the performance :P I do agree that there is no reason not to buy an SLI-board though, because there's always the chance that the support for it improves drastically the next year. Still, I wouldn't pay too much extra for the SLI-chipset over the Nf4U. It's like the same price :P. EDIT: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2258&p=5 ... 70% performance gain. Although that point about the shaders and such is pretty valid.

I hate the fact that there are more and more IM services coming out. It seems that the number of users isn't driven by the featureset or flexibility, but rather by the marketing of the particular IM protocol. For instance, kids my age (14) all use AIM simply because it was the first and because it has television commercials. However, it is pretty obvious to more enlightened users (read: forum users, etc.) that MSN is better - better voicechat, fewer sex spammers in chatrooms, no need to create a chatroom to have multiple people, bigger buddy icons, less intrusive ads, better webcam integration, better email service and integration, etc. And then there's Jabber and Yahoo, which few people use anyway. This, in turn, contributes to the need and demand for multi-protocol clients such as Trillian and GAIM. Although these seem to ease the problem of dilution of users, there are still shortcomings (the inability to make multi-user conversations with users on different services, etc.), and it would be easier if a good IM solution got a foothold and somehow grabbed the marketshare. If Google does that then I'm onboard. If not, then I won't use it, since it'll just be 10 MB more of my computer's memory wasted on something I use 10 minutes a day. And, have people heard of this nifty thing called the TELEPHONE? Unless you're making what would be a long-distance call, Google Talk is effectively useless, all around.

Well if the same 6600GT is about $150 in two years, and 6800GT is like, what, the seventh best card out there, then I'll be able to buy a second and get 180% the performance of a single 6800GT, rather than blow another $300 for a next-gen card that will run about 10 fps faster.

Another thing: I chose an SLI motherboard so that I'll be able to upgrade the graphics system cheaper and more easily later on (when 6800GTs are like $150). Do SLI mobos need to have an SLI configuration right off the bat? Or can I just have the one card in there and add another later? And where do I get the bridge thingee to link the two cards?