I don't know about your case specifically, but the rule of thumb is that for low to mid range stuff you can get an AMD solution for about the same price that is going to have a slower CPU and faster GPU. It's pretty easy to beat a HD4000 GPU in any case. Of course this shoehorns you in a bit. If you went with the Intel solution, then you could drop a discrete GPU in later. If you go with a CPU that is too slow you often have to change more of the base system to upgrade (memory and motherboard).

I have to admit, I found the AMD64 moniker a little confusing when I first read it. I had to Google around to make sure my Core2 chip would support it and that it wasn't using some AMD proprietary extension top of the 64 bit extension. x86_64 is less confusing, even if it is more awkward to type out.

AMD was dominant while Intel was chasing dead ends (Netburst and Itanium). Once Intel woke up and started working on sane chip designs again AMD's goose was cooked. They just can't compete with Intel's R&D budget. Plus, AMD made some boneheaded decisions of their own, like firing a bunch of their R&D staff in the belief that computer automated chip layout would prove superior to human designed layouts.

Put up or shut up AMD. I don't care how awesome your chips will be in 2 years, I care how good they are now, and right now they aren't so good. 2 years is a long time in the CPU world, I hope your gains aren't completely eaten away before you launch the chip, again.

This is really a low quality article. "In the distant future we plan to release faster chips!" What a scoop!

Are you sure you didn't forget to enable TRIM support in your OS? Without that any SSD will start to bog down after a few months of regular use.

So you have to have a legitimate reason to be let in there, and they won't let random crazy people without documentation wander the facilities? Must be a military conspiracy.

OCZ always struggles with reliability, and buying their Lambo performance hardware always seems like a recipe for lost data. The fact that they're pushing MLC flash chips to the limit is not reassuring.

I've only ever been through college and the post-college job hunt (ok, during college job hunt) once, so I don't have enough data to form even a line, but my experience is that everything I did outside of actual classwork ended up being the most important parts of getting a job. If you only do the assigned classwork, then when you graduate you'll be competing with however many students are in your class who also did the same projects and learned the same skills. If you do something outside of the curriculum you'll stand out from your classmates for anybody looking for your particular skills.

Developing some software or even a useful web page will also help a ton once you get past the HR drones. It doesn't have to be the next Google, but having something to show the people you'll be working with is a huge help. Open source projects are great for this.

The final note: Don't think you have to do all of your partying in College because you'll be a family man the instant you graduate. Unless you are one of those guys who immediately has kids after graduating (or before!), there isn't nearly as much difference between college life and graduate life as movies/tv/etc... would make you think. This means it's ok to miss some parties because you're working on your cool side project. Just don't miss all of them because making friends and having fun is important too. It's a really hard balance and we don't make it easy on kids by giving only ridiculously one-sided advice that doesn't pass the real world test. I will say that you will regret it if you party too much and have to take a year of school all over again. Student loans suck big time. Oh, and paid internships/co-op opportunities that let you avoid having to take big loans? Solid gold.

The very very small times.

More commonly the response you get is "God damn fucking TiVo users."

And those are always the worst books. You know you're in trouble when you get a book and it is typeset in Computer Modern.

No, they're setting their weapons on autofire so they don't have to click.

Zenimax has already stated that John took no code or documents with him. This is about their right to patent an idea in the future if it looks like it might be a money maker. Other companies are supposed to know that they might want to patent the idea and stay away from it. Why Zenimax didn't just, you know, file for the patents is a question they have not answered.

If you could somehow break the runaway greenhouse effect on Venus it would be by far the best colonization option in the solar system outside of maybe the Moon (and only because the Moon is relatively close to us).

I have not done the math, but a good start might be slamming the mother of all comets into the planet to both blow most of the atmosphere away and to introduce a planet's worth of liquid water. Then dump massive amounts of engineered plankton on the planet to start fixing the CO2 and also start creating a biosphere. We're talking about a several thousand (probably million) year project here, but it's a lot easier than trying to ship and atmosphere over to Mars.

Yes, I agree that this administration is on the right side of history, but this is very annoying to people who elected them to be on the left! It's pretty annoying when the only two realistic candidates are the right and far right candidates.