| Monday
October 9, 2000
(I am posting these Sunday night.)
With the geforce card in Everquest, there is not a
whole lot to change. I would recommend running the Detonator 3 drivers
which you can obtain from www.nvidia.com
instead of the shipping drivers for the card. With the Detonator 3
drivers, you can control some performance options, but not very much in
the way of quality elements.
The fact is, Everquest's graphics are really quite
primitive. The direct3d mode is not very good, and the Glide mode is
antiquated technology as well. It's fun, but not nearly as impressive as
Quake III. The disappointing thing is, that even though the graphics are
primitive, they are not really all that fast. So you've got primitive
graphics that suffer from performance issues.
For everquest specifically (and I'm one of those who
plays it an awful lot), I find the Voodoo5 or even a Voodoo3 is better
than a geforce. But I think the Geforce 2 is the best card currently
available otherwise.
As for the DVD, I assume you're using a software
based player. Generally, the player you use is shipped with your card
software, and is tied to the drivers from that particular vendor. So,
unfortunately, if you want to use the software dvd player that came with
your card, you're stuck using those drivers. I suspect this is done
because the video card vendor must pay for each copy of the dvd player
that is included, and they don't want people using competing cards to
simply download and go.
If you don't mind a walk on the 'wild side' you
might take a look at this web page: http://cine1.webjump.com/
Note that I'm not %100 certain that is the cause of
your dvd player not working. You might try reinstalling the DVD player
software, if it is available as a separate install on your driver CD.
-Price
Actually, in Windows 98 with the
InterVideo WinDVD Player that came with my I/O Magic DVD drives, I had no
problems at all; it's with 2000 and Widows ME that things seem to happen.
With 2000 the solution is to uninstall the program and reinstall it; if
there's enough poop in the processor it will do fine, and there are no
glitches. With Windows ME it's more complicated. I explain what I know in
the October column. Thanks.
This was actually send to Cady, but a copy was
sent to me.
Well, I'm almost sold.
Despite being a writer of military SF, and a former
82nd trooper, I was _not_ sold on Land Warrior (and I'm still not one
hundred percent.) But the way you presented the system, the way you
phrased it, made it sound a hell of a lot more doable than the Buck Roger
POS that was apparently the Raytheon system.
Batteries are a killer. 24 hours is, sorry, not even
in the realm of reality; an infantry unit needs to be self-sufficient for
at least 72 hours. Which means triple the battery power which means a
three-fold increase in battery efficiency to stay "on weight."
That has been my number one concern of _all_ the "gee whiz"
stuff that has been coming down the pike. And, frankly, Moore's Law does
not hold for batteries or my damned laptop wouldn't weigh as much as it
does.
(Fuel cells might be the quantum leap, of course.
Did one of you guys generate the image of the Land Warrior frantically
patting his pockets for his "go juice"/"lighter
fluid?" "Hey! Sarge! Toss me a can of go-juice!")
The next book in the Posleen series is going to have
at least one team that should be using Land Warrior. Question: Is there
going to be any problem with using a slightly improved V0.6 Land Warrior
and do you want input on the description? Fortunately I have an
unobtainium power supply so no worries.
Oh, you said that the team was from "across the
division." Anybody from the 3/505 (or did they switch back to 1/508
again?)
Last "Oh." Did you know that you have the
same name as the former Sergeant Major of the 3/505 (1/508)? If it hadn't
been for your disclaimer at the beginning I'd be saying "Smaj! Who in
the hell let you in an Engineering School????" ;-)
John Ringo
As I let go of my feelings of guilt, I am in touch
with my inner sociopath. "Life Affirmations that are Attainable"
See sample chapters for my upcoming book "A
Hymn Before Battle" at: http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200007/0671319418.htm?blurb
Available in October from Baen Publishing wherever fine books are sold!
www.johnringo.com
Jerry,
I read about your Slashdot printing travails just
now, and I have a suggestion: create a Slashdot ID and then browse the
comments at a higher rating.
I know you probably don't visit Slashdot often, but
they often have cutting edge stories on science and social issues in
addition to the usual *nix, hardware, and OS stuff. To eliminate most of
the chatter, I created a Slashdot ID and logged in. Then, I changed my
comment threshold to browse comments at a "2."
Slashdot works on a moderation system. Comments
worth reading (informative, provacative, humorous) are moderated up; the
garbage is moderated down. For example, a story currently on the front
page has 350 comments; at a 2 setting, only 99 of those will appear if I
visit the story.
To really cull the material, browse at 3 or 4. At a
3 setting, only 26 comments on the above story appear. Only 15 comments
rated a 4, and 7 were rated 5.
You can browse at a higher threshold without the ID,
but the settings aren't saved. You then must re-set your preference with
each story.
Hope this helps.
JA -- John Alexander Faculty Resource Center The
University of Alabama johnalex@bama.ua.edu http://bama.ua.edu/~johnalex/
The problem is that you have to download all the
chatter even if you use the filter on what you read, and I don't have ten
minutes to wait for 400 pages of less than intelligent commentary to
download. Perhaps when I get a faster connection.
Brute Force computation is now for sale.
You recently mentioned seti@home as an example of
how simple it is to gather large groups of home computers into an
impressive supercomputer. This concept is now being offered commercially.
My spare computing power is currently being donated via www.parabon.com to
a cancer drug research program. Parabon is promising to start BUYING home
computer computation time from us with real money "real soon
now". Their page has discussions on how to buy computation FROM them.
I remember that the article where I found Parabon
had at least one other "we will buy your spare computation"
company. I don't know whether the concept is truly commercially viable,
but I find it interesting. I have previously donated my spare computing to
prime number searching and seti.
And we have created supercomputers...
Jerry:
I've used the 'Pournelle blue' with Word since it
was first offered. But occasionally, I'm asked to edit material using
Word's "track changes" method of redlining. The color
combination it uses is just plain unreadable with the white on blue
configuration.
How do you handle this on your system?
--Sincerely, Chuck
Alas I use the simple method: I switch to black
and white when I do comparisons. Takes almost no time...
Favorite but obscure programs - BCD CD faker
http://home.kamp.net/home/stefan.kirschdorf/cd_tools/bcd.htm
BCD (Buldozer's CD Faker) pretends to be an MSCDEX
drive. This allows programs that check for a CD to see their disc as a CD
even if it is somewhere else on the net or loaded to a HD. When I started
using my CD-less ultralight laptop on my home net to play games, I went
looking for a CD faker. Several other programs did not do the job.
I use this program with Win 98. I load the stub in
my autoexec (BCD /w). Each game that I use from the laptop gets a batch
file that uses SUBST or NET USE to give a letter to the appropriate
location, then a BCD command to make it look like a CD drive before
launching the game.
The program is released as a final version #1 or a
beta version #2. I have no complaints about the #2 beta in a couple of
years of use.
I have used this program in Win95.0 and Win 98.0. I
haven't tested it in 95OSR2 or 98SE or 98ME. Presumably it will work the
same.
-Greg Goss (mailto: gossg@mindlink.com)
Definitely one to have around. Thanks!
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