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Jun 4, 2003, 7:34pm

The Geforce FX chipset is the latest and greatest from nVidia; it's more than sufficient for usage with AW. Board manufacturers rarely stray far from chipset reference designs, and since AW uses DirectX/OpenGL versions natively supported by the FX, you shouldn't have any problems.

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Jun 5, 2003, 3:56am

Heresy! All must acknowledge The Blank Screen as the supreme ruler of the screen saver universe.

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Jun 5, 2003, 6:59pm

I thought you were only asking whether or not the card would work, but if you're looking for card recommendations, I'd have to agree with Comit and Mad Mike.

ATi's latest Radeon cards use a 256bit memory bus with traditional DDR RAM, but they still kick the heck out of an FX card ("DDR II" RAM/128bit bus) with a core clocked far higher than an opposing Radeon. Nvidia got the hint and switched to a 256bit interface with the 5900 Ultra, but that thing's going to cost a small fortune for a little while.

The Radeons are a good deal smaller than the FX cards, generate less heat (this is important if you don't have good case ventilation), and give you a good bang for the buck.

Here's a price comparison: (USD)

Radeon 9500 128MB: $142
GeforceFX 5600 : $149
Radeon 9600 Pro : $167
Radeon 9700 Pro : $265

Prices are from www.pricewatch.com

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Jun 9, 2003, 4:44pm

If you expect any large corporation to be kosher, then you're bordering on naive. ATi, AMD, and the other current underdogs spread marketing hype just as fraudulent as the rest of them.

Besides, brand-loyalty is counterproductive and antiquated. Buy the most personally suitable product with the best price; don't go with something else because you think the manufacturer is somehow more righteous :P

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Jun 9, 2003, 4:59pm

Once again, to even the score here, you have to remember how quickly things change in the PC market.

Let's take a trip down memory lane...

Anybody still remember the days when 3dfx was king and all challengers were worthless infidels? Back then, nVidia was to 3dfx what ATi was to nVidia a year or so ago - their products were unreliable (the drivers were a nightmare), graphically inferior, and they held a very small market share when compared to King 3dfx.

When nVidia started cleaning up its act, the 3dfx fanboys claimed that nVidia would never be able to top 3dfx in performance, reliability, or in quality. Those with doubt were silenced s few years later when nVidia bought what was left of the once unstoppable 3dfx. Now those same naysayers are nVidia fanboys, having quickly forgotten their previous allegiances. In the PC world, the crown of king is passed from company to company fairly often. But surprisingly, there are still those with short enough attention spans to not notice the trend...

To make things short (and the reader's prayers are finally answered...): my point here is that things change. Be open minded, and don't be brand loyal. Of course, there are some people who use AOHell's Netscape7 rather than Mozilla, the real deal, because of some misguided sense of nostalgia... ;-)

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Jun 9, 2003, 8:43pm

[View Quote] Actually, I *do* know what's going on with nVidia vs. Futuremark, and I still think you're wrong. Nvidia is a *huge* company with holdings in various markets. Its 3D graphics card market share alone dwarfs ATi's and it and a good reputation to back it. Because of this, nVidia can *afford* to take a few beatings to their reputation and not lose much customer-faith. Whereas ATi, who is just now securing a firm hold in the 3D accelerator market, has a rather dirty past and can't stand any further tarnishes to their reputation. The same goes with AMD - who until the K7 made comparably crappy processors to Intel.

Jun 9, 2003, 8:47pm

Hey kids, this is what not looking over your post before you hit 'send' does :P

[View Quote] * Its 3D graphics card market share alone dwarfs ATi's, and it has a good reputation to back it.

Jun 9, 2003, 9:55pm

[View Quote] That ATi has more merit than nVidia. Corporate entities exist for one purpose - to make a profit - and they'll go to any means to achieve that goal. What I meant to say is that ATi would pull the same stunts as nVidia if they had the buff to absorb the heat after doing so.

Jun 5, 2003, 9:47pm

[View Quote] Somehow I doubt that a rude person is going to agree with this sentiment. The people who are *truly* anti-social generally _don't_ socialize. The rude people you see on the Internet are just attention-seekers. If they really hated people and hated talking to them (hence the reason to be rude), then they wouldn't be hanging around populated areas or frequently posting in newsgroups. No, what you're talking about is the "look at me!" syndrome.

> So, in order to control the morons who can't seem to control their
> fingers, we kick people out who are being exceedingly rude, whether it's
> their first offense or their 100th offense. Don't like it? Feel free to
> take your business elsewhere.

"We"? Who is this "we"? If you're referring to AWI, then you must be hallucinating. "Whether it's their first offense or their 100th offense" isn't exactly true. AWI will only ban a citizen from Activeworlds if a serious or repeat offense has been committed (especially with the dwindling number of citizens willing to pay their prices). Unless you happen to call JP's mother a bitch, anyway :P. Tourists may be another matter, but with finances the way the are, I don't think AWI is going to get rid of a citizen just because someone cries, "Mommy, mommy! He hurted my feelings!". The said citizen would have to be repeatedly abusive to warrant action on AWI's part.

The Peacekeepers aren't of any assistance, either. The PKs rarely even *breathe* outside of AlphaWorld GZ. I seem to remember SW Comit bringing this to attention rather recently. People are allowed to bring bots in and crash social events just for the hell of it. This kind of stuff happened even in the days when Alpha Prime was still kicking. Now AlphaWorld's nickname should be changed to Alpha Abandoned. Where AW used to harbor more than a hundred people at any given time, it now usually holds thirty. Mutation, AWGate, and AWTeen are frequently more popular than AlphaWorld (Mutation being privately owned). With AlphaWorld now a comparative ghost town, the PKs are pretty much defunct.

> As for the real life rude people, you don't have to live with them,
> either. You can always punch them in the face! :)

This coming from an old-time advocate of the mute feature. I assume you're joking, but if not... well, I can't say I agree with you. Physical violence isn't a solution to an annoyance, especially in "civilized" America. If you punch a person whom actually bothers to press charges, you will probably get off with a warning, but such things aren't good for your image. If someone is rude to you, then don't socialize with them. If they're repetitively abusive (note that there is a huge difference between rudeness and abuse), go to a higher authority. The law system may not be perfect, but it's certainly not going to be improved by vigilantes.

Jun 6, 2003, 2:45pm

[View Quote] I never take you for granted ;-)

> As for your second point, I don't think you can blame the lack of
> visitors in AW on PKs, or even on rude people. It's simply because of
> the price increase that most people have taken off for points unknown.
> And the only way for that to be reversed would be for AWI to either a)
> lower the prices again, or b) somehow make AW *worth* the price
> increase. And as it stands right now, I don't see either of those
> options occurring anytime soon. :-/

I didn't mean to blame AlphaWorld's abandonment on the PKs; I was just saying that they aren't much help in taking care of troublemakers outside of GZ.

But you're right about the price increase not being the total reason that AW lost its visitors. People are willing to pay much more money for online games than AW's comparatively feeble $6.95 per month. Granted, AW's technology isn't on par with programs like Second Life, but those programs have an ant-colony of developers and a budget that could get the United States out of debt.

Still, there are relatively outdated programs with a larger user base than AW. As you said, people would be willing to pay the raised prices if AW was worth the dough. AW's technology is sufficient to support a growing user base, though. The real problem, I think, is a combination of lack of community involvement and a complete void where AWI's marketing department should be.

Anyway, speaking of marketing... whatever happened to Murasaki's banner rotation idea?

Jun 7, 2003, 3:38pm

You've got it all wrong, you silly little Brit. We sue people for making our kids fat! :P

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Jun 12, 2003, 7:33pm

[View Quote] According to whom? Whoever thinks that AW's current situation is fine needs a thwack in the head or two :P

Here's the picture as I see it:

First the Juno link went dead. While many xenophobic community members hailed this event as prayers answered-at-last, it was a dire blow to the future of Active Worlds as a company. The Active Worlds Corporation (or whatever the heck they felt like calling themselves at the time) failed as a public corporation. It was taken off of NASDAQ when Rick and JP bought AWI from the corporate shell that represented it, which I suppose was made up of the remnants of the Vanguard merger back in 1999. The price increase, as a last-ditch effort to save AW, has had some terrible consequences to what was an already fragile community.

Activity has dropped to a ghost-town level in most popular areas; the most community-oriented members of the AW staff have gone to greener pastures (Flagg, Roland, Facter, HamFon); and the latest version of Active Worlds will have been in beta for a whole year on the 28th of this month. Now add the fact that 3.4 features less improvements than past updates which took less time to complete, and you have a recipe for stagnation.

AW is already dead - the body just hasn't gone cold yet. There's still a chance of resuscitation, but the probability grows more slim as time wears on. Hey... the recession of the tech market wasn't helped along much when 9/11 hit. The collapsing wake of .com corporations has to drown us out someday. Unless some miracle of fortune occurs, we may have to hope for another company to bring AW out of the ashes as Circle of Fire once did.

Jun 12, 2003, 9:11pm

Hey - here's hoping that I'm wrong.

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Jun 13, 2003, 12:28am

[View Quote] Try Stephen Baxter, Aurthur C. Clarke, or Robert Heinlein. Hell, reading a dictionary would be more interesting and infinitely less mindless than a financial report on a hasbeen/neverwillbe company such as AWI.

Jun 19, 2003, 8:38pm

I would like to introduce a novel concept to those at the controls of the AW universe. What I would like to show you is this nifty new thing called proofreading. What you do is check for errors *before* you hit the apply button in order to avoid spamming the entire universe unnecessarily.

* * *

Immigration Officer: Welcome to The Activeworlds Universe! The coolest place in cyberspace! 3.4 is released! If you experience any objects not showing up in certain worlds, try deleting your cache and that should solve your problem. Enjoy :-)

Immigration Officer: Welcome to Activeworlds! The coolest place in cyberspace! 3.4 is released! If you experience any objects not showing in certain worlds, try deleting your cache & that should solve your problem. Don't forge to try the new keyboard configuration options :)

Immigration Officer: Welcome to Activeworlds! The coolest place in cyberspace! 3.4 is released! If you experience any objects not showing in certain worlds, try deleting your cache & that should solve your problem. Don't forget to try the new keyboard mapping option. Enjoy :)

Jun 19, 2003, 10:07pm

[View Quote] Look, I can understand an occasional mistake, but this happens *all the time*. It's bad enough that world owners have no way of controlling these silly announcements, but you'd think that AWI could at least get the message right the first time so that we aren't spammed three times in just as many seconds.

I'm not going to say anything else; I just wanted to make my thoughts on the matter known :P

Jun 28, 2003, 4:19pm

The best way to prevent your PC from spreading e-mail viruses is this:

Don't use Outlook Express. Just about every Tom-Dick-and-Joe designs his e-mail virus to propagate through Outlook Express. OE also has that nasty habit of executing any code it sees :P

There are *much* better mail clients available, anyway. Mozilla Mail wipes the floor with Outlook Express. Its Bayesian spam filtering system is just beautiful. It's highly configurable, too. Setting it to disable cookies, javascript, and plugins for the mail client takes about three seconds of your time and makes it almost impossible for a virus to infect your PC just from reading a message. Just don't go executing attachments.

Eudora (though I'm not very familiar with it) has a pretty large fan base, too; though I do doesn't have a built-in newsreader (the main reason I've not used it). Still might be worth checking out. Ask around a bit. There are plenty of people not using OE.

To you Kazaa users out there:

If you often download anything other than media files (ie: software) you're going to pick up malicious code. There isn't any way to avoid it. Having good virus protection isn't any guarantee, either. When you get infected with a huge number of viruses, the law of averages comes into play. Norton/McAfee/InsertAVHere simply can't detect ALL viruses. Thus if you are infected with one or two viruses, the chances are that these viruses are common pests and your AV software should be able to take care of them. When your PC is harboring around fifty viruses, though, several of those are, by probability alone, going to be uncommon and your AV software may sit there and gawk at them with a blank stare on its face. Conversely, it may pick them all up and you'll be home free. But don't count on it.

Nobody has a right to gripe about picking up viruses off of Kazaa, though they may be extremely annoying. You're downloading music, videos, and software for free. If you want guaranteed virus-free code, you'll probably end up having to pay for it.

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Jun 30, 2003, 4:41pm

Did you provide a log of the event in your e-mail to Active Worlds? Are there any other witnesses willing to testify the same as you? If you find that the answer to both of these questions is 'no', then AWI is hardly obliged to take your letter very seriously.

You waltz in here foaming vaguely about a gatekeeper's alleged injustices providing no evidence, not even so much as a log, and expect us all to unquestioningly see the immense evils that lurk around every corner of AW. All we have to go on here is your word, which, when dealing with unknown persons on the Internet, is worthless.

If you're going to publically tarnish someone's reputation (for all we know someone that you merely dislike), then you had damned well better be able to back it up with some semblance of evidence. If you have a log and witnesses to verify your claim, fine. By all means, post them. But don't use half-verbalized accusations and a lack of information to attempt to sway your audience.

Good day.

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Jun 30, 2003, 4:55pm

Seeing as you did not cross-post correctly, I unfortunately missed the thread that has arisen in the Community newsgroup. You can find my further (and most likely final) response there.

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Jul 3, 2003, 2:11am

Well... only to an extent. When you take into account that the paying citizens are the only source of revenue keeping AW afloat right now, the citizens are the ones who have the final say on these matters. If a lot of people complained about the Customs Aide, it would be either modified or removed.

The thing is, though, that very few people have a problem with the Customs Aide. Granted, it can't read context. It does, however, keep chat clean at the cost of relatively few misfires. Most people who want to chat in a G-rated environment are willing to accept the risk of being wrongly ejected every now and then. After all, it's only five minutes...

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Jul 3, 2003, 1:51am

May just be me, but it looks like alexbot.exe has been removed from the public root directory.

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Jul 7, 2003, 1:00pm

[View Quote] It could be a problem with a short clipping plane. Short clipping planes will cut things out at certain angles because of their straight-edged nature.

---------------------------
Obj A Obj B

You

Now rotate your position a few degrees to the right and Obj B gets cut out of the scene. Facers are especially susceptible to this phenomenon because they rotate to face the camera and are two-dimensional.

If this is happening in your world, try increasing the max fog limit in World Features (also the clipping plane) to 400 or above. 400 meters was the default clipping plane in 3.3, and most users are comfortable with it. The max clipping plane is around 1200 meters, but you should be forewarned that increasing the clipping plane will reduce Z-buffer accuracy.

If that doesn't help, send a bug report including the details you mentioned here to devteam at activeworlds.com

Jul 11, 2003, 5:50pm

[View Quote] I didn't know there were this many seti at homers in AW. I started an AW team if anyone's interested.

http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/stats/team/team_171214.html

Jul 11, 2003, 6:57pm

I used a cheesy banner generator to make the banner image, but my artistic skills don't extend very far past stick figures.

Anyway, thanks for joining. That brings the AW team to a grand total of... two members. *fanfare*

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Jul 11, 2003, 8:05pm

* http://folding.stanford.edu

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Jul 11, 2003, 8:16pm

I didn't do a very thorough check first; I kind of figured that AW didn't have a team in place. Woops -_-

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Jul 11, 2003, 9:17pm

Hehe. Well, by figuring out how proteins fold, we can figure out how to eliminate or prevent many diseases. Folding at home isn't the end-all and be-all of medical distributed computing, though. There's a whole truckload of medical distributed computing projects popping up all over the place.

Builderz gave me this list earlier:

http://www.find-a-drug.org/ (medical)
http://d2ol.com/ (medical)
http://www.grid.org/ (multiple)

Check them out if you're interested. All distributed computing projects have their uses, and choosing to run one instead of another is only a matter of personal preference. There are plenty of computers in the world to satisfy the needs of all the currently running distributed computing projects, so trying to sway users away from another DCP's userbase by bashing it is a little overzealous.

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Jul 11, 2003, 10:40pm

The program analyzes radio sweeps collected by the Arecibo radio telescope, currently the most powerful in the world. The up-and-coming Allen array may change that, but it's still some time off.

SAH uses several techniques to sort through the files looking for narrowband radio transmissions, ones contained to a small frequency range or a single frequency. Radio waves are emitted from all sorts of masses, including stars, but SAH is looking for a very particular sort of signal that can rarely come from a natural source.

http://www.planetary.org/html/UPDATES/seti/alien_signal.html has more info.

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Jul 12, 2003, 3:06am

News: Bowen created a new logo to replace the ugly auto-generated one. It looks quite nice in comparison :)

And... we're up to five members! Rejoice!

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Jul 13, 2003, 4:30pm

If you're looking on the team page for your stats, then you'll have to wait a while. The page only refreshes every so often. You can check your individual statistics at http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/individual.html

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