Smoke

Really? First time I've read about this, on all of the tech forums I frequent. I'll take your word for it. It's a popular myth . Most sites just take it from others without doing any actual research, and quite a few people who follow those guides tend to be convinced by the idea of 1FPS more(Even if they don't achieve it, or don't even consider seeing what the difference is) More fun myths: http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/XPMyths.html EDIT: Oh hey here's the actual benchmarks: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=34&threadid=1678445&enterthread=y&arctab=y

Any suggestions on how to fix this 'physical memory' problem? But more RAM I assume? No, not necessarily, just kill some services and processes you don't need. http://majorgeeks.com/page.php?id=12 Disabling services has no measurable effect on your system performance unless you have a REALLY slow system. It's a classic myth, and there's been benchmarks to prove it. An idling service won't use any CPU power until it's called to action, and will barely use any RAM. http://www.besttechie.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=3007 There's a link to a no longer existant Anandtech topic in there, which did include benchmarks on various configurations to see how much of a difference it made. The only difference visible was on a pretty much totally outdated system that barely ran XP to begin with. As for actual advice: Pay attention to what's taking up that CPU power at those intervals. Don't look at the pretty graph because it won't tell you much, look at the Process list instead.

Stunt Race FX was a Nintendo title, the same team that worked on Starfox worked on this game as well(Hence the cameo appearances of the Arwings in several levels) Also, Uniracers/Unirally is a must-have. Fast and fun.

Datel's already working on a new Freeloader that's Wii-compatible. And until then my GC is still hooked up, so I can use it if I have to(It's a button-press on my SCART switchbox away)

January 12th, January 15th for the US.

Well, the replies do bump threads. Also, most spambots are registered with throwaway temporary addresses, so even a fully functional topic reply notification wouldn't help. As far as spam mail goes: There's not only checks to see if a message is delivered, but images with referrer links inside them that are triggered when they're viewed are another method to measure exposure. Also, posting your e-mail address visibly anywhere on the internet is pretty much an invitation to spam these days.

There is a kind of harm: The most recently replied to threads in a few certain forums are also posted on the front page. This means more exposure for the spambots in general, since any unsuspecting n00b could click one and follow the link in it. The spammer can see where he gets most of his hits from, and could very easily be tempted to set more bots on those places as a result. It's basically the same as spam e-mails: You don't read those and you don't respond to them either, because this just confirms activity. DarkeSword also explains it here three weeks ago.

Swapping out videocards, actually. Artifacting can have several causes, and it doesn't have to happen in everything. If reinstalling your videocard drivers gives no results, your only real option is getting a new card and putting it in.

Already known. giga's sig is designed to stretch pages and he has been notified to take it down or get out. I'm now going through all his posts to fix the retardation.

The GC Freeloader disc and the Action Replay both work.Also, threadbreak lol. Partially. Freeloader 1.06B doesn't work on the Wii.

Yet people don't seem to actually notice it since we still get replies to spambot threads. One pointer: Don't reply to spambots, and don't reply to someone replying to a spambot telling them it's a spambot. Keep replies to all spambot threads to a minimum. This includes the ones that post in an already existing thread(Yeah, those happen too and tend to be a lot harder to spot since we simply cannot go through every single topic fully) We should add a report button for threads or something... But I have a feeling that'd be abused as well.

The browser takes up 230 blocks on my system, and I can also copy it over to an SD Card, where it takes up 28.6 MB(Filename Content.bin) It can be copied back and forth with no restrictions, favorites are saved as a separate file.

Your Aussie friend sucks at adding favorites. Just go to the site, hit up the favorites and add. It's a pretty cool addition, although I most likely won't use it that much(Only to look stuff up quickly) Also, Toejam & Earl and some other games were added to the PAL VC shop today. Still no new N64 games though. EDIT: Oh hey, the Wii browser identifies itself as follows: Opera/9.00 (Nintendo Wii; U; ; 1309-9; en)

This should help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:PCIExpress.jpg Bottom one's a classic PCI slot, the others are various flavors of PCI-Express.

How is download speed related to RAM? It's most likely either related to busy servers, or to a security system in place to make sure people aren't downloading games for free that's verifying a whole lot of stuff.

But it's not required at all. By default, any wired XBox360 controller will work under Windows XP, provided you have an internet connection available to download the drivers, and an available USB port to connect it to. The PC version is only different from the console version in that it comes with a driver CD, containing the awesomely huge 4 megabyte driver file(And possibly a bunch of PDFs showing you not to stab yourself in the face with a USB cord in 500 different languages) I use a console-version myself and it worked perfectly from the moment I hooked it up and told XP to go download its own drivers. You can also download the drivers here. Also, there's a wireless PC version, but that is different in that it requires a wireless receiver, which is built into the actual XBox 360.

One big tip: Windows XP doesn't bluescreen by default, but restarts and tells you about the serious error it saw and did nothing about. You can enable BSoDs again though, and it's quite easy. Right-click My Computer > Properties > Advanced > Settings button under Startup and Recovery > Uncheck Automatically Restart under System Failure. Wait for it to happen again, and pay close attention to the following items: 1) The STOPcode itself(Usually in the form 0x000000XX) 2) The error message displayed in ALL_CAPS_WITH_UNDERSCORES 3) Filenames being mentioned Using these three things, you can usually identify the issue at hand, the cause, and the possible solution. http://support.microsoft.com/search/?adv=1 should help you search, otherwise there's Google. Search for the STOPcode, don't include all the other stuff. You'll most likely get several pages of KB articles, and you can use the rest of the info for filtering. And if all else fails there's Google. It often helps to search for the STOPcode in the form 0xXX instead of 0x000000XX though.

Did you try unplugging it completely? The only issue I've had with my Wii is the controller suddenly not being detected, which was fixed by just unplugging it and plugging it back in after a few seconds.

The Wii should still provide power to any USB device that's connected to it, even if it can't use the device itself. This is true. My cellphone has a MiniUSB port for both synchronizing and charging, and I can charge it with my USB cable on the Wii. I also have a cheapass card reader, and it can be powered by Wii as well(Just not used) Also, a 360 controller hooked up to a Wii will result in the ring flashing, indicating that it gets power as well.

Okay, turns out you can make the world vanish in the Forecast Channel: Go to Forecast Channel, select the Globe, press the Home button, select the Operations Guide, wait for it to be displayed, and hit Home again. It will appear again after a brief moment, but it's weird to see.

Actually, that depends. I haven't played Red Steel nor do I know about its music, but if the track is licensed from a commercial release, then it would be allowed to ask for a track name/artist in order to purchase the original. Same goes for buying an OST(And I know there's none available yet for RS) If he just wants a rip of the track, or wants to know where he can download it if it's a commercial release, then it's not allowed. Not even in Unmod, since the entire forums are under the "No copyrighted stuff" rule.

The US gets it tomorrow. They've most likely spread it out a bit to avoid the risk of the entire world downloading the update at once.

Yeah, I just got the update too. It's rather fancy, although the actual weather info seems to be slightly outdated most of the time. And the channel has good music(Different between local weather and globe), all nice and relaxing stuff. For those wondering how it works: When the weather channel is first started, it'll ask you for your region/state/province based on the country selection in the Wii itself. Once you select a region, you can select the nearest city from a list to get the weather for that place. It'll then switch to the main weather screen, where you'll see 'current' temperature, wind speed and weather conditions(Clear, cloudy, rain, snow, all that stuff). You can go up for the UV index, but also check the all-day forecast, tomorrow's forecast and a 5-day index. Once you hit up the globe, you can pan around the planet and select cities to see their weather. By default, the current sky condition is displayed. You can switch to current temperature, today's forecast, today's high, tomorrow's forecast and tomorrow's high. The overall interface is a lot like the Photo Channel in terms of layout and screen elements.

The Photo Channel also does MP3s in slideshows, just put your tracks on the same SD card. A separate MP3 channel would be kind of useless. Screenshots would be a nice option, but wouldn't really add all that much. Could be useful as a function of the Home button though, so it can be used in all games and VC titles as well. Especially if it's integrated into the Photo Channel so you can send pictures back to an SD card. Also, Nintendo states on all of their international sites that they don't accept any ideas from outside sources, mainly for copyright and patent reasons. There's no use in trying to contact them about it. Basically, if they see the demand in some way, they'll adapt to it.

Transport Tycoon is still an awesome game, even if it's over a decade old. And thanks to OpenTTD you don't even need a DOS machine or DOSbox. Then there's fun stuff like Heretic, Hexen and Hexen 2, Stunts, Lemmings, the Keen series, Space Quest, King's Quest, the Larry games, the Sim City games and others. Technically, these games are still illegal to download. However, most companies tend to not care about them too much, and in some cases the original company no longer exists. These old games are usually referred to as abandonware, so that should get you started on your search.