http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZDv9pgHp8Q


All I can say is.........Wow that is so not healthy! :eek:

$RANDOM:

Has anyone here played 4D Tetris? (There's a .deb for Debian/Ubuntu, an installer for Windows, a source archive, and there's a PKGBUILD in the Arch User Repository*. :D)

At first you might think, "mindfsck", but it's actually not all that hard; you just have to get used to "thinking in 4D", as it were. The funny thing is, I haven't even played 3D Tetris all that much… O_o

I suppose part of the reason it's not that hard for me is because I used to have an odd fascination with 4D geometry when I was younger**.

What does get to me about this particular implementation, though, is the controls. You can only rotate the blocks in one direction around their axes…which makes it somewhat frustrating (and frantic) when you're still trying to find the best orientation to set down a piece in just as it's approaching the top of the stack.

Another thing is that the playing "field" appears to be a single "hypertube", i.e. you can only rotate pieces; you can't move them around, as you would in 2D/3D Tetris. I suppose if you could, though, then it really would be a mindfsck, because you would have three axes of freedom to move your pieces as they "drop" down along the fourth. :p

(* - …for version 0.3.2. I tried modifying it for the latest version, but while it builds, it segfaults on startup. :()
(** - For reference, I'm 19. "When I was younger" for me means "when I was just hitting my double-digit years". Yes, I've been a geek/nerd for that long. :p)

I've been a geek since I was about five years old.... :p

Showing off my new Slackware threads
 

Finally got some scratch to spend, and I immediately bought three Slackware shirts :D. This is great because at my workplace it is business-casual dress, so t-shirts and jeans are acceptable.

Now I can proudly show off my new Slackware threads. I originally already had a Serious-Slack shirt, but it already faded a while back so I got another one :p, along with:

• Slack1337 Limited Ed. shirt
• Got Slack? shirt

So a very good donation to Slackware on my part, and now I feel all warm and fuzzy inside :p. I did have to pass up the Polo shirt, but I'll definitely put that on my list when X-Mas rolls around :D.

To everyone that reads this thread - I'm looking for a good powerful laptop, with integrated webcam, microphone, wireless, bluetooth, backlit keyboard, with a minimum of 4 GB of RAM, and 2.4 GHz 64 bit processor. The processor I would like to have is a quad core, but a dual core would work fine. A dedicated graphics card would be awesome as well, along with a spot to install a WWAN chipset for my GSM sim card. Any suggestions? I'm completely without a laptop as of now :(

I'm back for now.... I'm thinking about resurrecting this thread :p

Did you find a new lappy? :D

I did... Just didn't buy it yet... It's an alienware :D

Nice…specs?

(Yes, I realize this is beginning to turn into a non-productive chat thread…:rolleyes:)

It's the Alienware M17x..... Intel Core i7 2760QM 2.4GHz (3.5GHz w/Turbo Boost, 6MB Cache), 8 GB RAM, 750 GB hard drive @ 7200 RPM, 1GB GDDR5 AMD Radeon HD 6870M, black with green lighting for the keyboard, skull on the lid, etc. It's nice ;)

…sounds like an awesome laptop. :D

The only complaint I would have is the AMD GPU…isn't it going to be hard getting decent driver support for it? I've heard bad things about the proprietary Catalyst module, and I don't think xf86-video-ati is much better. Then again, I haven't had any hands-on experience with an AMD card (or a lappy with an AMD GPU), so I couldn't tell you for sure. :p

IMO NVIDIA and Intel are safer, but YMMV. :D

EDIT: Another thing (and forgive me if this is a really dumb question): how do you even get TurboBoost to work? Is it something automatic that just kind of "happens" when the CPU is under appropriate load, or is there some kind of configuration involved OS- and/or BIOS-side? :scratch:

It kicks in when you want it; You configure it via the BIOS settings. And the NVIDIA GPU's that are listed as options aren't ones that I want to use; Sure, they will work, but they have the Optimus technology built in, and there isn't a stable linux alternative to control it yet. I would rather use fglrx/catalyst with the AMD chipset. I have plenty of experience with it.... And if anything, I could go open source and wing it....

Hmm…I can't seem to find anything in my lappy's BIOS menu that mentions anything about TurboBoost, and according to Intel's site, my CPU supports it up to 2.53 GHz. :scratch:

Ack, I forgot about that…yeah, NVIDIA's been pushing the whole Optimus thing, it seems. I guess it's no longer as "safe" as it once was in terms of Linux support. :( Luckily I got my laptop before that was an issue, though (GeForce 310M, 512 MiB VRAM). :D

I think optimus is 1) overrated and 2) unimportant. My netbook says it has optimus, but I don't care, because it runs just fine using the nvidia drivers. Even if I could get the intel part working, I wouldn't, because I know the quality of Intel cards and drivers. It doesn't really improve battery life that much, maybe an extra 2 hours, but this depends very much on usage. I don't need more than 3-4 hours of battery life anyway, so optimus is completely useless to me.

That's why I'm not caring too much either man. Sure, it sounds nice, but I don't want to have a card that has this big feature that I don't need to use. Hence why I am going the AMD way :p