Coelocanth

No, that was the recurring 10 day authentication, which they did nuke. But the three activation limit is still in. The whole problem with the release was when they nuked the recurring activation, everyone thought "Oh, they dropped the DRM" and websites far and wide were saying the same thing and proclaiming "Power to the people". Unfortunately, they were completely hoodwinked. I don't know if it was planned that way by EA or not but if they did, it was a masterstroke because tons of peo

[quote]They'll probably remove the 3 activation limit like they did with Mass Effect, if they hadn't already.[/quote] As psychoak noted, the 3 activation limit is still alive and well on MEPC. It has [i]not[/i] been removed. Spore, like ME, isn't going to touch my machine until they get their heads in gear and get rid of this asinine 'copy protection' scheme.

[quote]who is going to be putting it on 3 computors anyway. its not like this game is going to be uncommon. what is the problem with a 3 comp limit?[/quote] It's a three [i]activation[/i] limit and it's tied to your hardware profile. So if you upgrade your machine you burn an activation. If you have to reinstall your OS, you burn an activation. I've been following the MEPC boards and seen some of the troubles people are reporting with this. Some people have installed once and been told

[quote]They got rid of the 10 day requirement. Unfortunately the real problem is the limit of 3 activations.[/quote] Yeah, that and SecuROM 7.

[quote]8800gt.. I think they can be had under $200.00 Do your homework and stay within your budget ( I rarely do .. lol) .[/quote] Hell, you can pick one up for 130 bucks if you look around.

How many watts is you power supply rated? This is only a general indicator. The biggest concern is the amps on the 12 volt rail. If you can find out the brand and model of your PSU [power supply unit] (you should be able to just open your case and look at the sticker on the PSU), it would help.

The 4870 is an ATI card. Several companies make it. It runs around 300 bucks right now (you'll want to make sure your power supply can support it, btw).

[quote]Keep it updated, run your scans, and most importantly be and intelligent user of the internet and stay away from emails with attachments (unless you know the sender)[/quote] Just want to second that advice. I've used AVG and Avast! and am currently satisfied with Avast! so I'm sticking with it. AVG was good, but gave me some false positives that became a pain in the rear (I've not had that problem with Avast! yet). Anyway, if you follow Philly's advice, you should be just fi

Love the pic of 'Bush' (I love Dr. Strangelove). But that palm tree video is hilarious. There are several flavors of stupid at work in that one.

Man, nvidia's been brutal with their drivers the last several months. That ATI 4870's looking sweeter all the time...

[quote]It is supposed to be giving the notice once the artifact is explored, yeah. But since that's what's bugged and you don't need to explore to find the artifact, the player gets the messages as soon as the AI colonizes these planets, too.So yep, it's a side effect of the bug, not an addition to.[/quote] Ah. I misread the post. Yes, that's indeed bugged.

[quote]This bug seems to effect enemies aswell. As soon as an enmey or ally colonizes a planet with artifact, you get the announcment "Other race has discovered an artifact".[/quote] That's been in the game since the beginning and is intended, as far as I'm aware. Tumbler: [quote]My resources are still being spent somewhere but looking for artifacts was basically gambling.[/quote] My impression was that's precisely the point of the artifacts. You can take the safe rout

[quote]Odd, I definitely saw it with MoTB that would've allowed my Warlock to cast in Medium with no penalty, but I decided to stick to light for the higher dex bonus.[/quote] Sorry to dig up an old quote (I was away for a while), but I see what you're referring to here. Yes, there's an Armored Caster feat in that sense, but it applies only to Bards and Warlocks. You cannot take the feat with any other arcane caster, so it wouldn't apply to Wizards or Sorcerers. As for the Eldr

I use one for my rig. It's kicked in a couple times when there were some brown-outs and it's allowed me a clean shut down during one black out so far. Well worth the investment.

Sorry to go off track a bit, but just clearing up some errors here: [quote]Sorry, no moving around stuff with your mind in NWN.I don't remember all the dependancies, but you can try something like this:Start as a human Rogue. They can dual-wield swords and get bonus sneak attack damage when attacking from behind (and a few other situational cases). So, they do a lot of damage.[/quote] Well, any class can dual wield weapons. You just need to take the proper feats. :) As

[quote]Heechee and Rama Series... (and their respective authors!)[/quote] Fred Pohl and Arthur C. Clarke, respectively. Great stuff. I have too many authors I like to list them all, and would be hard pressed to pick one 'favorite'. But... here are a few I particularly enjoy (in no particular order, and just staying in the fantasy/sci-fi/horror categories): Iain M. Banks Peter F. Hamilton Arthur C. Clarke Fred Pohl Frank Herbert Stephen R. Donaldson<

[quote]I haven't read up on 4.0 so I dunno if the sneak attack system was changed.[/quote] Substantially. But then, the whole ruleset is substantially changed. I've seen a lot of pissing and moaning about the new rules and how they're dumbed down/too different/not D&D, etc. etc., but the more I read through the books, the more I'm liking them. They're not perfect (what is?), but I think they're actually well done and better balanced in a lot of ways than the 3.x rules.

[quote]Just goes to show that to master something like computers, people need to have the right experience. Either people are too old to learn all those features/controls/functions, or too young to understand and keep up.[/quote] It's got nothing to do with age. It's whether or not the person cares. Most people don't, or don't even realize what the potential risks may be with using computers and certain software. People are people, and for the most part, people are also sheep

[quote]Not surprising. So many old people online these days that don't know how to operate a computer. Perhaps some grandchild have told them to decativate the automatic updates. Strange though....[/quote] Funny thing about this: while many older people aren't all that computer savvy, I've found from cruising around various websites, forums, and reading different things here and there that it's the [i]young[/i] people that often don't know what they're doing. Purely anecdotal evidence,

Mostly Firefox for me, with the occasional use of Opera. Both fully updated. (And I guess I'm an 'old fogey' age wise, although I don't run Windows 2000. XP for me. ;) )

You can run anything save Crysis on full specs? Somehow I doubt that.

[quote]I use Maple 11, a math symbolic calculator, matlab and mathemtica. I can only say that my GPU will not help one bit with all three of these programs, hence, i need a good muti core cpu.[/quote] [link="http://www.dvhardware.net/article27538.html"]WWW Link[/link] How about a supercomputer built using graphics cards?

Indeed, if you're using Norton, you've got bigger worries than hackers and viruses.

Oh, I love the Overseer's sound effect.

Folding is a great idea to put an old machine to good use. You can also revamp them for home file servers, HTPCs, as test a machine for various Linux distros, tons of stuff. But wow. 1 billion machines. Impressive.