New machine...

Well, with pay day comes the chance to finally fix my machine. I've order the bits I need to rebuild my main machine and I must say, I'm really looking forward to actually sitting down and a proper PC and not using a laptop. When multi-monitor appeared back in windows 98 it really did change everything. Not that many took notice back then, but I've now been using more than one monitor for so long, I really take bad to laptops with a single machine. In fact, at home I have 3 montors, and at work 4! Yes, you read that right...I have a single machine with 4 montors attached! I really should take a picture of it sometime as its quite neat. It lets me have virtually all my applications open AND visible - its very cool. I do wish they would make newer PCI cards other than the NVidia 6200 or ATI 7000 (which isnt Vista compatable)- which are both pretty crap.

So, I've bought a new motherboard that'll take my new quad-core CPU and 4gig of ram. To be honest, I'd be happy with a dual core, and 2-3gig ram but since I dont like doing this, I may as well make sure I dont have to upgrade for some time (a year or two at the least), so I've bought a good setup. Its costing about £250, but thats still less than half the price of an off the shelf full PC (from what I've seen...). I've also decided to install Vista64 (*sigh*) because I dont want to have to go through this again anytime soon... It does mean I'll have to either install DosBox, or rewrite the important ones. The other reason is so that I can create 32 and 64bit apps easily. I want my debugger to run in 64bit mode for example, and it also means I get access to ALL my RAM - which is nice... So yeah... hate it, but Im buggered.

When I was in the US I got a stack of BluRay disks, and I was horrified (and disgusted) to see they've started to region code things. Now, I read somewhere that they do this because something might be released on disk in the US, but just be coming out at the Cinema over here in the UK. Now, you might think well...okay, we might just about give you that. But then I was reading through a list of region coded disks, and found out The Longest Day was also region coded. Now... it was released in 1962, so what the hell do they take us for. In todays climent, we're in a world market, not local - particually with the credit crunch having been in the US but affecting the world. So I think it's actually a form of racism. After all your giving preferential treatment to some contries, and not others - and thats racist; Particually given that their excuse of movie release dates is an obvious lie. Region coding pisses me off. I paid for the disk, I bought it legally when on holiday, so why shouldn't I be allowed to watch it? We're a global enonomy, so why should Joe Blogs from the US be allowed to watch it and I'm not.... Now I'll have to wait and get a multiregion bluray player. I'll tell you one thing though, I will have NO guilt getting a hidef media version of it to stream from my PC - I already own the fucker. I'm a big fan of buying things you use,watch or play. If you get a copy of anything and dont like it, delete and and dont buy it. If you do..then you should buy it - whatever it is. I have a stack of games I tried loved so bought - many are still shrunk wrapped and only opened when I go back to play them years later. So my region coded Disk will be the same. Still wrapped, but at least I own them.

Sorry.... bit of a rant there.... Oh one thing though.... Some BluRay disks over there come with a PC media version, which is a FAB idea!! Well done those guys (whoever thought that up).