You can't permanently band people from Steam when all you need to create a new account is an e-mail address. People will just use a new throwaway account for hacking. Hackers already are known to setup perhaps 10 new Steam accounts when the game they enjoy hacking the most is on sale, and buy 10 copies. I've seen hackers get banned and then brag to people laughing at them getting banned that they have half a dozen more copies and they are going to enjoy getting them all banned but until they do they are going to make life a misery specifically for the guy laughing at them.

The way to go is to make getting a pass to play online painfully difficult. Make it like applying for a passport almost, require a Social Security number or driving license, something that will tie the online ID to an actual person. Making it so that if they get caught cheating once, they can't play ever again with the people that want to play fairly is a damn good idea, but you need a solid form of online identification to do that.

If he had skipped forwards a few few years and said he was browsing on an Amiga, I wouldn't have been certain he was joking. Also, back somewhere around 1996 or so I once used Internet Explorer on an emulated mac, running on my Amiga. That's a few thousand hipster points before hipsters even existed, hell before I could even grow a decent beard too.

Surely it would be in agri-technology firms interests to nurture these young scientists and offer to help them through university and develop their ideas? This is Slashdot, not Natural News.

Saw some anger against Lizard Squad on Twitter, and after looking into it, I'm not sure but it certainly appears that they called in a bomb threat on a flight the Sony CEO (or some other bigwig, I forget) was taking, and ended up getting it grounded. There's some other claims about them being based in the so called Islamic State in Iraq, challenging FBI agents to come and get them.

I also decided not to buy BF4, and have been playing Battlefield as part of a clan since BF2 was popular, every game and every expansion pack. I joked to my friends that I would be back for Battlefield 5 in around 12 months time. When Hardline was revealed, I realised I would probably never return to Battlefield.

I would expect it to look terrible on the desktop, but was thinking for gaming it might not look so bad, assuming the graphics card was throwing out over 100 half frames a second.

Indeed. I have a 144hz screen, and I noticed as soon as I went from 60hz to 144hz that even when the frame rate was below 60fps, it was still smoother than before. It was obvious that it would be smoother when getting over 60fps, but this surprised me. Thinking about it I came to the same conclusion.

I have also been wondering what would the picture be like if using a high refresh rate when the graphics card cannot render enough frames for one every refresh, what if it only rendered half the pixels every update. Not like an old interlaced picture, but rendered half the odd numbered pixels on one line and half the even number on the next line. Would it look blurred or odd? Would the way the eye works adapt to this better than rendering full screens at half the framerate?

I was also wondering whether such a display method would be useful for pre-rendered low frame rate applications such as video playback? (This is where a +1 informative comment says 'Yes, they've been doing it for years already...' heh)

The PC specced was mismatched. The processor he picked is a 6 core, and that socket it known for being the line for hardware enthusiasts trying to build something very special. It uses 4 channels of DDR3 for example. Better to go with the other current socket and a 4770k processor.

Combined with this processor if wanting to play games the 660gtx isn't the best choice at the moment. Top of the line for previous generation would be a 680gtx which is exactly the same card as current 770gtx I believe, both great cards for gaming with a 1080p 60hz screen. Going a little above these cards would be a good idea if planning to play with a 120hz screen or use one of the higher resolution screens available now.

Making the decision between higher refresh rates and higher resolution screens is a tricky one. I went with higher refresh rate which is great for online first person shooters, but with single player games the beauty which higher resolutions brings out in some titles makes me think I made the wrong decision sometimes.

Good luck with your method, Hardware and constantly swapping components is to me still a hobby. Since I built this PC a few years ago I have used 4 hard disks, 3 graphics cards, 3 soundcards, 2 processors, 2 cpu coolers and 2 different sets of ram. No components were broken, and the ram was the same capacity just different speed ratings.

I'm from Europe too, but I don't make a habit of turning my computers off. I always figured when the screen was off and the computer wasn't doing much it didn't use much power. I think I might have had a hard drive once that was working one day when I switched it off, then didn't work the next day when I switched it back on. Hence I haven't really switched them off for 15 years or so. Actually, once I had a girlfriend and I think she made me switch it off, and other times I have lived in other peoples houses and I think I switched them off then too.

The way I see it is that one of the worst thing for electronics is hot-cold cycles. Especially if you live in a damp country like the part of the UK where I come from.

There's plenty of stuff that gets left on in Europe. Hell, I have a load of hifi equipment that doesn't even have power buttons you can access easily, because in the manufacturers opinion it is better left on.

I thought that with my last case purchase, a Corsair 800D. I do love the case but now I'm thinking I would quite like to attend a LAN event or two at some point, and this thing is huge and weighs a ton. Just taking it out to the workshop to blast the dust out a few times a year is enough to make me think an aluminium or even plastic case might be a better idea. Maybe something slightly smaller too. It does look the part sitting under the desk mind, and has brilliant cable management and has to be the easiest case I've ever had the pleasure of building with.

My previous case lasted over ten years, kinda... I made another build in a cheap case and there wasn't the space to run two graphics cards, as the gfx power cables and the hard disks clashed. I reverted to the old AT tower from the 90's for a while, which I painted black and blue from its old beige that was yellowing. I have no problem paying many times the cost of the cheapest cases... I don't consider myself crazy. I don't think she meant to say crazy. We are enthusiasts and to some it might seem crazy but to us it's a sense of pride and enjoyment to own such a product.

I can't help but think that sort of case would garner a lot more respect if it was one the owner had designed and built themselves rather than just have bought and built it, but there would still be a fair amount of kudos to anyone that did buy it; just as a demonstration that their PC means more to them than just a tool to access Facebook.

I would just start downloading something via torrent. When his ping goes to hell and the rubber-banding makes it worthless playing, tell him that when he can afford his own internet connection he can have his latency back.

So long as it still works on my Amiga...

I'm glad I'm not the only car geek on here...

I'm in the UK and driving an S14a 200sx (aka a Silvia or a 240sx in the US) which I've had on axle stands for two years treating all the rot and swapping out most of the standard stuff for better parts. It's running around 300bhp now, and is a lovely car to drive although the standard ones weren't bad 17 years ago, and I guess it really isn't a terribly old car but it has none of the traction control or stability guff that modern stuff comes with.

Anyhow, this probably isn't of much interest to you being a Japanese car knowing the reputation the import tuning scene can have over there, but I know a guy who has one of those little Corvette lumps in his Silvia... supercharged and putting down around 650bhp. I still dream of a Corvette myself, but there isn't much that will touch his old Nissan that isn't seriously exotic!

It seems rather a lot of people quoted that one sentence but it upset you the most so I'll apologise here. It was a light hearted rhetorical question (head full of paint thinner meant my grammar was missing in places in that post so do please excuse the missing question mark) and a bit of casual national stereotyping isn't something I'd wish to offend people with. I know most people here can easily take that joke on the chin, but it seems you can't, and I am sorry for that. I am indeed Eurotrash too!

Speed of sound is 330m/s yes, but thats a kilometer in ~3 seconds. You Americans still don't get this metric stuff do you. In a third of a second, you are looking at 110meters, so a third of a second delay in starting is still higher than I would have expected.