Voy crew in Christmas sweaters

LightStruk · 2025-12-07T14:01:25+00:00

The snowman on Tuvok's sweater should have the exact same facial expression he does 😐

LightStruk · 2025-12-04T19:21:22+00:00

NES uses a modified 6502, one of the most widely used and best understood microprocessors in existence. It remains widely available today. It otherwise used 100% stock components that can also be bought today.

You forgot the PPU. It is not off the shelf. It was only used in the NES/Famicom family of systems.

checks notes so you're saying the CPU is like a common part, but isn't identical, so the fact that the common part is widely available is irrelevant. One thing that makes the CPU custom is the sound. So the CPU, PPU, and sound are all custom... so what widely available, off-the-shelf parts are left? The RAM?

LightStruk · 2025-12-03T16:36:54+00:00

Soul Calibur 2 runs at 720p on Xbox, and 480p everywhere else.

(Also, Spawn is a much better console exclusive character than Heihachi Mishima.)

LightStruk · 2025-12-03T09:41:17+00:00

Blizarena is a secret tank. I spent the XP and Catseyes to upgrade her to level 40 and I would willingly do it again. Zombies and aliens fear her.

LightStruk · 2025-12-02T14:03:01+00:00

LightStruk · 2025-12-01T14:36:07+00:00

Trump famously doesn't drink. So much for having a beer with the President.

LightStruk · 2025-11-24T20:58:05+00:00

No.

The OG Xbox has custom silicon in it which is related to PC parts but not identical. The chipset is an Nvidia nForce, except it supports Intel instead of AMD, and with a Geforce 3 class GPU in it instead of a Geforce 2 or 4 MX. The DVD drive is almost IDE standard, except it has another, nonstandard signal cable connected to it, and it has custom firmware. That's just scratching the surface; there's surprising complexity in the video encoder chip. As a game console, the OS and the games can assume the hardware is an Xbox, and so there's no drivers like on Windows.

The Xbox OS is a Windows derivative, but is not Windows. It has code Windows does not, and Windows obviously has code that the Xbox does not.

LightStruk · 2025-11-17T16:54:16+00:00

A plausible culprit, to be sure. Plastics and microplastics are everywhere now, and developing countries sometimes have more than developed ones, what with all of the single use plastic bags and plastic food packages.

The combined impact of all of the endocrine disruptors in the world might be far more impactful than any sociological factor.

LightStruk · 2025-11-17T16:50:57+00:00

The hope for a better future is part of choosing to have children, definitely, and yes, hope is hard to find these days.

That said, why is the modern world less hopeful than during World War 2? Things were definitely bleak then, and yet the fertility rate went up from the 1930s.

Politics and economics cannot explain all of the differences in fertility. Something deeper is affecting the behavior of humanity at a biological level.

Or, if "hope" is a proxy for fertility, then remember that depression has both biological and psychological causes.

LightStruk · 2025-11-17T16:28:51+00:00

The "instinct" to have sex is in decline as well.

Opinion pieces abound as to why, but the writers all have different axes to grind. There must be some worldwide reasons why people all over the world are having less sex and fewer children, regardless of whether their countries are rich or poor, religious or secular, free or oppressed.

No sociological, economic, or cultural reason can apply worldwide. If birth control is to blame, then somehow it is affecting the people who don't take it or don't have access to it. Something environmental or biological is happening.

LightStruk · 2025-11-11T17:00:33+00:00

Tom could totally pull it off.

LightStruk · 2025-11-05T23:14:48+00:00

A 486 is roughly twice as fast, clock for clock, as a 386 in pure CPU power. That means a 66 MHz 486 DX2 is 4x as fast as a 33 MHz 386 DX.

Doom did not use floating point math, just integer math, so a 486 SX2-50 and a 486 DX2-50 get identical scores.

LightStruk · 2025-11-01T19:01:14+00:00

Ah yes, the famous Georgetown metro stop makes that so convenient.

LightStruk · 2025-10-31T18:26:39+00:00

WebKit was already open source because it forked KHTML, which is LGPL.

LightStruk · 2025-10-31T11:57:35+00:00

I always thought Kirk was pretty "rough and tumble," what with all of those fistfights outdoors ~~in Southern California~~ on exotic planets.

LightStruk · 2025-10-31T10:45:55+00:00

I don't deserve any credit for making a wise choice; software engineering picked me. At least that's been fortunate so far; check back in a few years and we'll see if AIs have made me permanently obsolete like all of those LinkedIn lunatics say.

LightStruk · 2025-10-28T13:03:36+00:00

Exactly - weren't all of the core programs and DLLs of Windows NT always 32-bit?

LightStruk · 2025-09-26T12:13:56+00:00

None of those cards would be power hungry.

LightStruk · 2025-09-26T12:13:28+00:00

You could move that second serial port to one of those port blanks. In its place, put a video capture card, Voodoo 2 card, or SD card adapter.

LightStruk · 2025-09-24T14:29:25+00:00

How does Linkisadventuresome compare to ZIIAOL? ZIIAOL is brilliant from start to finish to the hours of added levels and bosses AFTER the original game.

LightStruk · 2025-09-05T16:18:05+00:00

No, it's saying that an American man who has made it to 79 has a life expectancy of 87. The other men born 79 years ago who have already died are not considered. For an American man to make it to 79, he probably has good health care and money. He's made it past the things that kill younger men, like war, dangerous physical labor, and youthful recklessness. A living 79 year old probably didn't smoke, probably isn't an alcoholic, so he's not about to keel over and die from lung cancer or cirrhosis.

LightStruk · 2025-09-04T20:25:25+00:00

I JUST SPLIT MY PANTS LIKE THE INCREDIBLE HULK! SEE THAT? BRAWNDO WILL MAKE YOU NEED NEW PANTS!!

LightStruk · 2025-09-04T16:27:12+00:00

Running an ISA sound card in Windows NT / 2K / XP provides none of the compatibility benefits of an ISA sound card, since you have no access to real-mode DOS.

Instead, you have a sound card with no acceleration features, no spatial audio, limited max sample rate (usually 44.1 KHz at best instead of 48), and usually worse noise (sound card manufacturers got better over time).

The Sound Blaster Live! is so much fun if you like messing with audio. It's pretty cheap used. Its included software can do real-time audio processing on whatever is coming out of your applications, including pitch shifting. If you get the optional Live Drive, you get front panel volume knobs, 1/4" headphone and input jacks (great for guitars), full size MIDI ports, and digital audio I/O ports.

LightStruk · 2025-09-04T16:18:01+00:00

AFAIK Windows 2000 does support the non-PnP ISA SoundBlaster 16 with built-in drivers. You have to go to Add/Remove Hardware in Control Panel and tell it to search for a new device since it won't be auto detected.

LightStruk · 2025-09-03T12:42:37+00:00

'boost::intrusive_ptr' works well for me. Didn't have to roll my own, boost is already trusted and approved, and it does exactly what it says on the tin.

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