By thumb track I mean those that you don't move - they have a trackball, but a thumb operated one. They're pretty rare it seems, logitech had a few models.

I forked out 50 quid for my last one a few years ago. They're wierd to get used to but the precision and speed is worth it, as well as being able to operate with minimal movement being a bonus. 

I just set my face as my login password. Facial recognition FTW 

or he'll come and cut off your face. 

...set my ass as my log-in password. Or, rather, tried to. It gave me an error: "Password Rejected: Recognition already identified with user: "ijed"". Hmmmm.... 

 

speaking of hardware, my router sucks. It's a d-link WBR-1310, and I'm pretty dissapointed since all previous d-link routers/network adapters i've bought were trouble free. But this one can't keep a goddamn connection for more than a few hours, and needs occasional hard-resets just get re-establish a connection.

Anyone got a recommendation for a good, basic wireless router? I've heard linksys is good, is that true? 

not too basic... i would like a decent web-based admin tool, firewall, packet routing type tools. I just don't need the flashy "Gamer Xtreeeme Routers" that sell for $200 for no apparent reason. 

Will you not be doing any Xtreeeme routing then? 

It doesn't want to work, and is anyway slower than just typing a password since the camera has to power up. Typical wave of the future. 

Recognised me today. I'm guessing this is how I'll feel in a year or so when my kid calls me daddy. 

i was just wondering if anyone had ever seen something like this:

how it goes is that after some hours of use, i start to see wierd things happening with stuff related to the video card.

for example, games, geometry flicker and video files either show up black (with sound) or with a thick pinkish/gray line going horizontally at a random height. the line flickers but stays at the same position.

restarting the machine gets rid of the problem, so it seems it's video ram corruption? 

it would occur more randomly, unless it only happens when overheating, but then I'd expect it to happen quite soon after the restart again. (same with most other problems)

vague idea: bug with mem management in driver? 

is obviously guesswork. I've seen the weirdest stuff happen 

similar stuff happened to with my old card 

looked into it a bit more by running different 3d applications at the same time.

when the problem has started, i've found that running 3ds max will stop the problem from showing up in videos but it will cause the flickering when running doom3 at the same time.
closing 3ds max will stop the problem in doom3, but the lines appear in videos again.

i don't really know all that much about memory management or really video cards in general though. i guess i'll have to spend more time on google. :S 

I would try older drivers (eg half a year old, then a year old). Well, unless your's are old, try the latest ones then. Some similar problems happened to me on Linux and I could fix it with different drivers. 

Here's some great photos and write up about ancient personal computers.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/dawn_personal_computer_altair_ibm_pc?page=0%2C0 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_Jz7IMwBt4 

I had lots of problems with my 6600GT on Linux recently. Graphic corruption, crashes and freezes happening with OpenGL applications (it even corrupted Quake demo recording). I tried various driver versions with no luck. Then I reinstalled Windows XP on another partition to play some QuakeLive. I had some (very) minor corruption even there, some geometry flashes every ~5 minutes.

Now I am back in Linux and everything is fine. Windows fixed my Linux. Fuck! 

 

How's your new PC? Post pics of the surrounding environment of the monster. 

Sometimes hardware *does* seem to need resetting, though i've never seen what you're describing... and can't think of the reason either ? (I've got an original 6800 agp).

I suppose you've got nvclock installed.
It's got nice thermal monitoring as well as overclocking, etc. 

I could play several hours over two days without problems. Now they are back and affect Windows as well. Well, somehow this is good because the chance of me buying some new PC rises. 

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/radeon-hd-5870,review-31685.html

Also this looks cool:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/skeleton-torture-rack,review-31683.html 

I ordered a tv from digitaldirect.co.uk about 3 and a half weeks ago, and it was meant to take 3-5 working days to arrive, so after several interim phonecalls and PM with them, yesterday I called them and they announced for the third week running that it would likely be next week.
So I cancelled it. It will probably take 5 - 7 worling days for them to refund my money, but luckily I had enough to order another one.
I ordered the same model with 3 years warranty instead of 4 for �30 less delivered approx 24 hours ago (lunchtime yesterday) and it is now in my livingroom! Hooray for Amazon, boo-raa for Digital Direct!