Messages

126

General Chat / Re: I have computer related questions. Can you help?

« on: August 14, 2010, 12:26:11 PM »

There is a very serious chance it will infect the other computer as well.  I strongly recommend against connecting to any other windows computer, in fact I would disconnect any ethernet cables connected to it since it could spread the infection over the network and/or might be used as part of a botnet. 

I will give you the same advice I gave mop it up: get a Linux livecd like parted magic that has virus scan software built-in and do the scan from there. That is the only safe way to do it.  Well, you could also install Linux on a second partition, install it on an external hard drive, or use Linux from a live USB, but those are all more difficult options.  But doing the virus scan from Linux is the only safe way to do it (or you could use another non-windows OS, but Os X costs a lot and can't be installed on most hardware and other Unix-like oses have no real advantage over linux).

127

General Gaming / Re: Series Series - Round 3: Mario Kart 64 Finally Places! Vote now for Fourth!

« on: August 14, 2010, 12:19:20 PM »

Mario Kart Wii has the worst examples of these...but also had some great examples of well designed levels.  I think Mario Kart Wii's levels were sometimes had too much going on. 

What, specifically, are you referring to?

128

General Gaming / Re: Series Series - Round 3: Mario Kart 64 Finally Places! Vote now for Fourth!

« on: August 14, 2010, 12:18:52 PM »

What are you talking about? There is no such hazard on that track.

Shortly after the finish line there are some green pipes.  Green shells occasionally pop out of them.

129

General Chat / Re: I have computer related questions. Can you help?

« on: August 13, 2010, 04:14:47 PM »

If you connect computers directly you need to use a straight cat5, not a crossed. There are 4 pairs of wires in a cat5:

It shouldn't matter, gigabit network cards are supposed to automatically detect whether they are using ordinary cat5 or crossover cable and and change their behavior accordingly.

130

General Chat / Re: I have computer related questions. Can you help?

« on: August 12, 2010, 01:19:18 PM »

First things first, get virusscan software NOW.  Not having virus software on a windows computer is, frankly, insane. 

Second, are both computers fully up-to-date in terms of windows patches and service packs?

Can one of the computers talk to the other, or is blocked both ways? 

Have you tried pinging the IP address of one computer from the other? 

Have you tried directly connecting the two computers to each other?  If they are both using gigabit network cards that should be possible. 

Is the router firmware up-to-date?  Can you get AT&T to rent you a newer model?  Can both computers connect to the internet?  You are going to need a 4-port router at the very least anyway, perhaps you can go ahead and get it now and see if that works better.

Are you sure the passwords are set up correctly?

What if you connect the printer to the Win 7 box instead?  Does that change anything?

131

General Gaming / Re: Series Series - Round 3: Mario Kart: 1st place to DS. Vote now for 2nd!

« on: August 11, 2010, 09:48:37 PM »

I think the reason so many of us like Mario Kart 64 is because it's got the right mix of racing and crazy-luck.  Beyond that point, there's so many items and track designs that are built around killing you, then defiling your corpse with sex toys that it tends to lose some of the competitive spirit.

Few of the tracks really have truly random threats.  If you learn the tracks and its patterns you can avoid the threats easily enough, and you can balance risk-taking with safety depending on how the course is going and your personal inclination.  This adds a lot of strategy and a lot of benefit to practice, since you can learn just how close you can come to a threat and still be okay, when something will likely be in a certain place and what you can do to avoid it or take advantage of it.  It also means you can't just close your eyes and do the track from memory, you need to actually pay attention to what is going on around you and plan your next move on-the-fly.  I wouldn't consider those cheap or "built around killing you", and it prevents the tracks from getting boring because you actually have to pay attention to what is going on around you in order to get through the fastest.

The only things that I recall that I would really consider cheap and annoying are the random green shells popping out of pipes in Koopa Kape on MK Wii, since they are unpredictable and come at you from behind.

132

General Gaming / Re: Series Series - Round 3: Mario Kart: 1st place to DS. Vote now for 2nd!

« on: August 11, 2010, 09:44:30 PM »

Baby Park is a terrible regular racing track. But it's fun is in having max players (4 or 8 if you can LAN) and crazy fun with shells and such flying everywhere.

For single-player, yeah baby park is terrible.  But for multiplayer it is one of my favorite courses.  With the short-track, bunched-in players, walls that many items can cross, and lots of laps it is just utter mayhem.  You can never get too far ahead because if you do you start lapping the last players, who have the most powerful weapons and can pummel you. 

I was really disappointed it wasn't in MK Wii.  Actually, I was disappointed MK Wii had no tracks with anything other than 3 laps.  Having longer tracks with fewer laps and shorter tracks with more laps added quite a bit of variation.

133

NWR Forums Discord / BOOBIES!!!!!

« on: August 11, 2010, 08:07:01 PM »

134

General Chat / Re: I have computer related questions. Can you help?

« on: August 11, 2010, 02:43:50 AM »

Vnc is a system that allows you to share a desktop over a network, so you can see your screen from one computer in a window on a different one.  So it is totally unrelated to VPN.

There are different types of RAID, but what RAID1 means is, in short, that you have two or more hard drives that contain the exact same data.  Any data written to one is written to the other, any data deleted from one is deleted from the other, and so on.  That means if one fails you still have a complete copy of all of your files.  There isn't even a primary and secondary hard drive, they are both identical in every way and are seen as a single disk by the operating system.  It doesn't help with viruses or user error or anything like that, but it does help with hard drive crashes and other hard drive hardware failures.

135

General Chat / Re: I have computer related questions. Can you help?

« on: August 11, 2010, 01:30:58 AM »

Why wouldn't they just use VPN?

136

General Chat / Re: I have computer related questions. Can you help?

« on: August 10, 2010, 08:42:13 PM »

I don't think VNC is the way to go, I am pretty sure the professional versions of those programs already support accessing the data stored on a server from within the program's own interface.  There is likely a server version of the program that manages the data and client versions that access the data from the server version. 

As for more general file-sharing, connecting to a mapped network drive is not really any harder for the users than VNC and the former is much faster and more flexible.  So I am not sure what benefit VNC would give them. 

I also agree that an exchange server is overkill, and RAID is good for storage.

137

General Gaming / Re: Series Series - Round 3: Mario Kart: 1st place to DS. Vote now for 2nd!

« on: August 10, 2010, 04:13:46 PM »

I would agree that most of the tracks in DD and Wii are a lot more interesting than most of those in 64.  Those in 64 are mostly pretty flat (excluding pits) and didn't tend to have much going on.  This is even more stark when comparing equivalent levels on the games. 

For instance the road level in MK 64 was a simple loop road with a bridge and some cars.  There were no atlernative routes and really nothing there besides the cars.  DD had two road levels.  The first had several shortcuts, including a pipe that shot you out, a sidewalk separated by a railing, a bridge you could drive up the side of, and a couple tunnels.  The second had the track split into 3 intersecting paths, a looping on-ramp, and a pit.

Similarly, the snow level in MK 64 had an iceberg in the middle of the road at one point, some pinguins, and a cave with some pillars.  The one in DD had ice-skating shy guys in place of pinguins, dudes that froze you solid, a couple of blocks of ice with no traction,  a much larger downward-sloping tunnel, and a couple of areas you could cut across by going over hills.  The Wii one has a launcher, skiing shy-guys, moguls, jumps, a pit you can jump across, deep snow, and is one of the steeper down-hill levels in any MK game (and is down-hill almost the entire way). 

The MK 64 seaside level has a hole you can jump through and a ramp, while the DD one has areas that are flooded by tides, a pipe that shoots you out, a big hill, enemies that chase, and a big jump, and the closest one to that on the Wii has a river you need to drive down with several cut-offs, pipes that shoot out shells, an underwater tunnel with water and lightning bolts that shrink you, and a watefall that tries to push you off the course.

Even the same-named level, Moo Moo Meadows, on the Wii has a decent hill, cows on the track, a field you can cut across, and an area with grass patches and moving moles you need to avoid.  The MK 64 one has some fixed moles in a bridge you have to avoid the pillars of, that is about it.

The standard rainbow road level in MK64 is basically a road with hills, a railing, and chomps.  The DD one has a launcher, lots of sharp turns with no walls, much larger changes in altitude, and lots of boosters.  The Wii one has several launchers, several splits in the road, a part the road that bounces you in the air, lots of boosters, lots of areas with no walls, and an area with pits you can jump over or walls you can shoot up.

I would say in pretty much every case, the equivalent levels in DD and Wii have at least as much, and often far more, going on in them than in MK 64, and almost every level in DD and Wii have at least as much going on as the most complicated level in 64, and most of the levels in MK 64 have a lot less going on.

138

General Chat / Re: I have computer related questions. Can you help?

« on: August 10, 2010, 03:48:04 PM »

I could probably just set up the main computer with a backup drive and network all that other computers to that one.

So they need a file server.  And it sounds like they will only want to serve files to computers on the local network (VPN computers are essentially part of the local network so I am not differentiating the two from this regard).

I figure if I do it that way I can just use a regular wireless router and just plug everything in and do remote access from there to gain remote access to the network instead of a VPN tunnel using a much more expensive router.

A wireless router will only work so long as people are in range, which they wouldn't be.  You would need a VPN tunnel no matter what.  The question, though, is why you need a router to begin with.  For the price of 4-port router you could get an 8 or maybe even 16-port switch and use the computer as the router.  That would be slightly more difficult, but a lot cheaper.  It is easy to do under Linux but I don't know how to do it under windows, you may need the windows server edition which I am not familiar with.

I'm sure a simple windows based computer with a single log-on to the network (only 3 people will be accessing it mostly from within the office), but I don't have all the details since i haven't talked to the owner myself yet.

As I said, it doesn't really matter from that perspective whether you use windows or Linux, since they both support the same file-sharing protocols.  But Linux is more reliable, more secure, easier to maintain, cheaper up front (free), and lower costs long-term.  However, not all software necessarily runs on it (although most enterprise-level software does nowadays since a lot of companies are switching mission-critical systems to Linux).

139

General Chat / Re: I have computer related questions. Can you help?

« on: August 10, 2010, 02:01:42 AM »

Technically any computer can act as a computer as long as it has the correct software, it depends on the company's needs.  Specialized server hardware is available, I think it gives benefits like integrated hardware firewalls, modularity and scalability, and faster networking performance.  It also depends on the operating system they want to use.  Linux is by far the best for servers, but if they are intent on using windows then you have additional security concerns and to worry about and it may limit your processor options.  It also depends on the networking services they want.  Is it only VPN, or do they want file sharing as well?  What VPN software are they planning to use?  Will the server serve files, and if so what protocol do they want to use and will it only do so with local computer or will it need to do so with computers on other networks?  If the latter, how do they want to do the authentication?  Do they want to support single sign-on for all computers on the network?  What operating systems do they need to support on client computer?  None of these are serious concerns on desktop systems since generally desktop operating system interact well over networks, but I think they make more of a difference with servers.

I am not an expert on servers, I have never set one up myself, but I have done considerable research on specific issues of relevance to me so I might be able to offer advice on certain issues if I know more about the constraints you are facing.

140

General Chat / Re: Dying relatives

« on: August 10, 2010, 01:53:50 AM »

I have one grandparent left.  The rest died a while ago, the most recent one over a decade ago.

141

General Gaming / Re: Series Series - Round 3: Mario Kart: 1st place to DS. Vote now for 2nd!

« on: August 09, 2010, 04:58:44 PM »

I may have missed this, but why doesn't the N64 version get second place and we move on to 3rd?  Isn't that how tiebreakers usually work?

142

General Chat / Re: I have computer related questions. Can you help?

« on: August 09, 2010, 12:26:01 AM »

I'm not saying it should stop you from doing things, just that if you are going to be recovering the files then doing a virus scan on top of that can't hurt.  Even if a virus wasn't the cause of the problem, it is still a good opportunity to do a check under controlled conditions.

143

General Chat / Re: I have computer related questions. Can you help?

« on: August 08, 2010, 07:44:02 PM »

Very well.  After what I have seen and experiences I have heard from others I personally wouldn't risk it, but it is up to you.

144

General Chat / Re: Your Mortality

« on: August 08, 2010, 11:44:13 AM »

I just assume that by the time I get that old science will have advanced far enough that they'll be able to transplant my conscious into another body--be it physical or just electronic--essentially allowing me to live forever.

My goal for the next 50 years is to not get hit by a bus before this is a reality.

I wouldn't count on loading your brain into a computer necessarily happening within the next 50 years.  It could, but I wouldn't count on it.  The brain is obscenely complicated, even our best computers today can only simulate extreme simple representations of a single brain cell in real-time, and there are about 600 billion of them, with radically different behavior amongst them.  And the problem doesn't scale linearly either, so 600 billion more cells would take far more than 600 billion times the processing power and memory.  That ignores the question of how we would even copy the state of all of the cells when many of the properties exist on extremely tiny (sub-cellular or molecular) length scales and are not electrical in nature.

Transplanting the brain would be a better bet, but the brain ages too, so it would only postpone the inevitable.  We would first need to figure out why aging happens, then figure out a way to correct it, then figure out a way to induce the brain to create more brain cells (normally we have a net loss of brain cells over time, which would result in you ultimately dieing no matter what the rest of the body did, although normally the rate of decay of the brain is a lot slower than the rest of the body).  We also know the aging brain undergoes numerous other sorts of changes, although we don't know what all of them are yet, why they happen, or what their overall impact is.  And we have to do that without triggering cancer.

145

General Chat / Re: Your Mortality

« on: August 08, 2010, 11:39:28 AM »

How do you deal with it?

If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are rotten, either write things worth reading or do things worth the writing.
-Benjamin Franklin

I deal with it by focusing on how my life impacts the life of others.

Do you believe in an afterlife?

No, not in the supernatural sense at least.  But every life does have an impact on others, so after you die you do live on in the effects your life has had on the world.  So I strive to have a positive effect, so I leave the world at least a slightly better place than I entered it.  It doesn't so much matter if I am remembered for doing them, or that anyone even knows I did them, so long as they improve something about the world.

146

General Chat / Re: I have computer related questions. Can you help?

« on: August 08, 2010, 02:51:53 AM »

Parted magic has excellent tools for recovering data from a corrupted partition.  The tool you want is called TestDisk.  There are windows versions available, but I would recommend against using them in case it is a virus.  There is also Scrounge NTFS,

What makes you think it isn't a virus?  Parted magic also has virus-scan capabilities, and since it is linux-based there is no risk of the virus spreading.  The tool is called ClamAV.  That means you can load the hard drive, recover the data, and scan it for viruses, all without putting any other systems at risk. 

If you were to do it within windows there is always the possibility that it will re-infect any computer you try to view the files on.  I know someone who had that happen to him, and he is the head of IT for a company.  The moment the operating system mounted the drive the virus infected the computer.

Actually, about a month back one of my co-workers was complaining that her computer was acting strange.  I checked and found out her virus-scan software hadn't update in 11 months.  I got really suspicious when not only would the software not update, I couldn't even manually access the websites for the anti-virus software she had installed in order to manually update.   

So I booted a Linux partition I had set up for a previous user of the computer, ran some virus scan software from there, and found the system not only had hundreds of viruses, but several rootkits.  A rootkit is a particularly vicious type of virus that alters the fundamental behavior of the operating system in in order to make itself invisible to the system, including virus scan software.  That makes it essentially impossible to detect from within the operating system, but it is easy to detect from another operating system not affected by the rootkit.  Once there is a rootkit, the operating system is pretty much beyond saving (or rather it is far more work to save it then to start over from scratch), so I copied the users' documents to the Linux partition, scanned them thoroughly for viruses, then tried to reinstall windows from scratch.  However, the windows XP install disk corrupted the hard drive's partition table.  Linux had no problem with it, but windows refused to install on the drive at all (this is not the first time this has happened, another guy I know has the same problem).  So I booted back into Linux, burnt the files to DVD, stuck a partition magic disk I had laying around in the drive, booted it up, created a new partition table, then installed windows just fine.  It was quite an ordeal though.

147

General Chat / Re: Halbred's Paleo-News Thread

« on: August 06, 2010, 12:56:32 AM »

Are there any other non-synapsids with differentiated teeth?  I thought that was one of the unique features that separated synapsids from other tetrapods.

148

General Gaming / Re: Series Series - Round 3: Mario Kart... Fight!

« on: August 06, 2010, 12:54:06 AM »

I have both MK64 and the original on VC and, although I have fond memories of them, they just don't hold up.  The controls on the original are just far too loose, I can barely stay on the course.  The courses in MK64 are just too short and lack the variety of features found in later titles.  I haven't played the portable games.

149

General Gaming / Re: Series Series - MarioKart wins Round 3. Poll Upcoming. New, unrelated poll up!

« on: August 03, 2010, 06:45:02 PM »

Yoshi has the ability to encase things or creatures into eggs though, so the shell could be composed of... something the Yoshi can create.

I don't recall him doing this outside of smash bros, and that was a change necessary for the sake of balance (you can't have Yoshi or Kirby instantly kill anyone they eat like they do in their own games).  Do you have any examples from a real Mario or Yoshi game?

150

General Gaming / Re: Series Series - MarioKart wins Round 3. Poll Upcoming. New, unrelated poll up!

« on: August 03, 2010, 06:42:33 PM »

I have questions. What kind of intestinal system could the Yoshi's have that can propel the eggs at such a speed and distance, and with such accuracy?

First, eggs are not formed in the intestinal system, they are formed in the reproductive system.  Second, Yoshi does not propel the eggs out of anything, he throws them. 

Are there any similar features in real-life dinosaurs?

We don't know much about the behavior of dinosaurs.  For all we know dinosaurs that seemed to die near nests may have been the victim of an attack.

Or did Mario, (like Olimar with the Pikmin) later show the Yoshi's how to use them offensively against predators?

Unlikely, considering the Yoshis were already able to do it when Mario was still an infant.

Why not just make a gun?

Because eggs are a lot cooler, of course.

Could Bowser use that for evil in the next Super Mario RPG?

I don't think Bowser is quite that smart.  The best he seems to be able to come up with is a flying smiley face (don't even get me started in the physics of that thing).

How could animals that size grab the nutrients so quickly before passing it along as an egg? Or is it a separate digestive system altogether, like a separate gizzard?

A gizzard doesn't really do much digestion, it is more from crushing and grinding stuff, especially for animals that lack teeth (a category which Yoshi may fall into).