I have recently read the first 3 books of Markus Heitz Dwarves Quadrilogy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Heitz

I have found these books a good fun read and difficult to put down, I especially like his willingness to kill off what you think are main characters rather than making the seem almost invulnerable as some fantasy authors do.

It is with great sadness I annouce that the last flying Avro Vulcan XH558 will be embarking on it's final season of display flying in 2013:

http://www.aviationnews.eu/2012/11/02/final-season-announced-for-last-flying-vulcan/

I just hope I can get to see her this year

When Microsoft first announced the release of Windows 8 Consumer Preview, I did some quick figuring, and found out that, based on past performance and technical issues, this OS was doomed to fall under the "Microsoft Curse", where every other OS they released would suck*, and each "cursed" OS would suck at an order of magnitude worse than the last (and let's face it, Vista was pretty horrible), but I fired up my VirtualBox software, and decided to give it a go, anyway. Sadly, I hated most of what I saw. First off, where the F%&* was my Start Menu? And secondly, what did they DO to my Desktop?!?!?! Little did I realize that those two were the same thing. There were a lot of interesting things going on, but I was too blinded by the entire Start Screen thing to see them objectively. Whatever the reason, I decided that Win 8 was cursed, and simply gave up on it.

Then I hear that Microsoft is practically giving Win 8 away (and the "Pro" edition, no less!) for a ridiculous price of $40USD, and I was tempted, but I stuck to my decision not to be seduced by the price, or all of the reviews of "it loads crazy fast!" and such. After all, it was only a matter of time before the world realized that I was right, Win 8 was cursed, and I would become vindicated for not turning to the Dark Side. Then Mom went ahead and succumbed, botched the install on her laptop, and I had to fix it.

The fix was actually a simple matter of updating the graphics driver, and was fairly simple to do. Mom had an HDMI monitor attached to the laptop, and I was beginning to notice some things with a multiple screen setup that I never would have noticed with Win 8 in a single screen, VM environment: They've FINALLY started treating each monitor as a separate entity!

That was the final blow. I broke down, scrabbled up all my pennies, and timidly handed Uncle Bill my $39.99USD and asked, "Please Sir. Might I have some more?" From that moment on, my downfall was assured.

I now have Windows 8 Pro installed on my desktop computer. The horrible trials and sufferings that I described when I went from XP Pro to Win 7 were practically non-existent, the computer still has the same file layout and structure, and the install process (not including app/program installation of course; that's still ongoing) took less than 2 1/2 hours, total, and had only one minor glitch - again, a video card problem that required updated drivers; go figure!

I still hate the Start Screen, and quite likely always will, but all of the other "plusses" so far outweigh that one "minus" that I don't think I'll regret having made the switch. So as you can see, I've turned to the Dark Side, but that's ok. It's better over here.









*Note: The curse only seems to apply to consumer products, rather than including enterprise/server editions

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Dr. Richard Wallace, creator of the ALICE chatbot and co-creator of the AIML standard, announced today the public release of the new, expanded AIML 2.0 standard. It's still in the "working draft" stage, but this new standard will provide some very exciting new features, including the ability of one chatbot to access information from other chatbots, centrally supplied chatbot servers, or other web/network services. The list of features added is rather long, and some of them may require a bit of explanation/discussion. I encourage any and all botmasters to participate in the upcoming discussion, to get better acquainted with what's coming down the line.

Ok, what does this mean for us today? Not much (well, a ~LOT~ for me, since I have to... well, that's my problem, isn't it? ), but it could mean a great deal by the end of the year or sooner. I'm really looking forward to incorporating the new AIML standard into Program O version 3, but it may take me a while to get a suitable set of modules written to accommodate the new standard. Thankfully, the design of version 3 will be such that adding the modules (once they're written) will be a simple, painless thing.

I know several of us have chatbots that will probably be built using the new standard, so it would behoove us all to join in on the discussion at chatbots.org. The site's performance is much improved now, so that shouldn't be an issue any more.

As a few of us are now using Steam I thought I would post a few tips.

1. Always run steam as admin.

2. You only ever need to install Steam once then you can cut and paste it to any drive you like, meaning you don't have to install your games or Steam again after an OS change, just locate the Steam exe and run it.

3. Once you have played a game to the end and you no longer whish to play it for a while you can backup the game to another drive and free up space on your SSD for more games, if at any time you want to play the game again you can simply import it back to Steam. (right click on the game in your Steam games to access the menu)

I need some recommendations from my friends on what ssd to get.
So much has changes since I bought my Intel 40gb ssd for over $300.00, price, controllers with toggle or Synchronous, firmware etc. etc. etc.

I have $68.oo usd but could get up to $100.oo usd but probably no more than that. My only requirements is that it is 60gig or more. for it will be a primary drive for windows8 os so it must be a stable drive as well. preferably from new egg or tiger direct.

right now my 40 gig drive only has 1.2gigs left so I need to act fast. sure I can move my index files and others to my 1tb drive but I do not want to go that route, I would rather buy a new drive and rid myself of this hassle of not having enough space.

Just incase you may want to watch this Asteroid fly by, click here:-