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Why is it that the Master/Slave terminology can actually be a topic of debate when it is used in a electronic or mechanical sense?  It's not as though the terminals are colored black and white.  It's not as if the Master cylinder in your car bears the words, "Master Cylinder, Master Race, Born White and Proud!"  It's finding offense where none is intended and where the terms are applicable and fairly accurate.

However, I fill out census forms and answer questionaires.  When completing employment forms or a request for a replacement driver's license, I have to mark "White" (Which I'm not.. I'm more of a tannish-pink) or the supposedly less-offensive term "Caucasian."  I'm never sure whether to mark this since none of my relatives have actually come here from Caucasia.  Technically, I could mark "Native American" being 1/4 Cherokee but I'm not actually registered with a tribe/reservation so I cannot do so, legally.  

Only my opinion, of course, but given the two situations, I believe I have more right to be offended and bitch about my situation than in the thread's example.  Maybe not.  I'll strive to be more open-minded.  Perhaps, eventually, I can be so open-minded that I can accomodate a gentle breeze through my skull.  BTW, this post isn't directed towards any one person but at people in general.  If you're offended by it, I'll be sure not to expect a Winter Holiday present from you.

Your request sounds perfectly reasonable.   I went to a private (Chrisitan) school until High School and they had a skirt/dress requirement for females for a short while.  Many girls passed petitions around to the males.  The petition stated that if the girls were not allowed to wear pants then the males would join them by wearing dresses or skirts.  The petition worked (fortunately before we had to follow through with it) and uniforms/dress codes became equal (except for the issue of ear-piercing).  The reason so many males signed the petition, I assume, was because it was the 80's and ultra-tight jeans were "in."  

I've debated and wondered about the issue of school uniforms and have never quite made up my mind.  I find it interesting that several school-age AGSers are actually in favor of them (with the obvious exception of the antiquated skirt-rule).  Interesting.

The southern drawl is only decent (IMO) when someone half-way intelligent is using it.

Remix.. I do see your point but really, we're talking about hardware here.  We're talking about terms that were coined (when used with hardware) before civil rights had become commonplace.  There is no negative connotation, at least no more than primary/secondary.  What? One was first and therefore better than the Second?  Not trying to start a flame-war here but primary/secondary or client/server or even host/client do not accurately describe the relationship between IDE devices in that chain.  Master / Slave does.      

Another thought though..  Perhaps Parent/Child might be workable.. or Guardian/dependant.  Only half joking here.. at least the terms would describe the workings without causing too much offense.  

A comment by another user yielded the following quote from Windows magazine about P.C. PCs:
The P.C. PC
1) Female and male connectors are replaced by non-gender-specific connectors

2) The turbo/slow button is replaced by the turbo/mhz-challenged button.

3) Screen color shall be fixed to include white, black, brown, yellow and red in accordance with the 1990 U.S. Census racial distributions.

4) Software bugs are now features. Fatal software bugs are now special features. A system crash is now an upgrade opportunity.

5) Floppy disk drives are replaced by relaxed disk drives. Hard disk drives are replaced by tumescent disk drives.

6) Each drive's FAT (File Allocation Table) is replaced by its HEFTY (How Each File Takes Yards).

7) BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) is replaced by the BMCES (Basic Mutually Consenting Exchange System.)

8 ) Each dialog box must simultaneously display English, Spanish, Creole, French, German, Japanese, Hindustani, Arabic, Swahili and Texan.

9) The on/off switch must be childproof and capable of being used by those with arthritis.

Yeah, I heard some bit of news awhile ago about the Gran Tetons being an offensive name.  I don't recall if they'd decided upon a new official name or not.

I used to be a Sims fan.  I played for at least 40 hours before getting utterly tired of it.  I then started doing strange and unsavory things in the game.  I killed my first by turning off free-will and sending him into the street.  I made him stay there, pissing and whining until he died.  I then made the whole family join him after they received his urn.  Other than that, I used some utility to add a custom-skin to a sim.  It was from a picture of a friend of mine.  The problem was that it was over-exposed and grainy so he looked like a burn-victim in-game.  I named him Burn Victim John and made a 9-square house with all the necessities.  He was quite happy until his stove burned the rest of his house down.  

Really, I thought it was a good/unique game but the expansion packs don't add enough to keep the series running.  

Link explains it all:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/11/26/master.term.reut/index.html

For those too lazy to click: Apparently someone saw some bit of hardware and griped about how discriminatory and racist the Master/Slave designation was.  So, LA county is strongly encouraging hardware manufacturers to change Master/Slave designations.  As to what they'll change it TO?  Your guess is as good as mine.  As someone else said, they could do Primary/Secondary but that would be offensive to school-age kids.    They could try Host and Parasite but we might offend leeches.  

So, it's official.  CA elected Arnold and now this issue.  It's time to get the hell outta here before the idiots completely take over - we already were above our moron-quota.  Something must've happened to tip the scales.

Hmm, have you been able to run any other DirectX games on that PC?

Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Space cadet pinball, some tetris-clone & dxdraw diag runs fine.  Hmm..  maybe I'll just have to AGS at home.. dammit.

Not to mention the price-drop has made it extremely affordable.  I saw an ad selling it for $99, including Zelda 1 & 2, both the zeldas from the 64 & a demo (whoopie!) for Windwalker

I gave my ex a self-made certificate that she could cash so that I wouldn't sell her, as a worker, to a coal-mine.  For the ex-stepkids, they got certificates that would enable them not to get kicked in the head.

Seriously though, I typically like to give gifts that can't be bought or reproduced by someone who doesn't know the person as well.  I arrange late-night picnics, carve personal symbolism in wood, paint a portrait and stuff like that.

Here's mine and it's damned exciting:


I used to have something more stylish but living w/ uber-chrisitian parents caused me to remove slightly offensive content.

The changes are excellent.  I think it makes the image a bit more singular in style.  A couple things I forgot to mention.. the sun being a shaded sphere looks a bit odd.  Perhaps if the ambient is set to 100 (don't know what the setting would be called in Gmax), it might not look quite as strange...  or at least a less-contrasting shadow would make is less odd.  Maybe if you used PSP with a transparent brush and went over the sun with a yellow layer...  The flowers done with stamps work fairly well..  maybe a tad realistic for the scene but don't stand out too badly.  You could try using a replace-color tool to give them more "cartoony" colors.  I'm gonna let other people reply so I don't seem like the only nit-picky bastard.  

Love the style..  quite unique-looking.  I like the cartoony-feeling mixed with the CGI.  Now, for the critiques (this is the part where I blather about how much you suck  )
The grass looks good, but the fine-detail doesn't really go with the rest of the picture.  Its waviness is nice but lends the impression that it's actually green fur.  

The clouds are also a little high-detail IMO.  The render-fog type clouds don't blend too well with the style.  Perhaps some puffy clouds made with metaballs or transparent spheroids?  

The painted windows look good but perhaps a little fuzzy.. if they could be made sharper or maybe the frames made out of polys with the panels painted?  

The door's alright but should probably be cut into the house instead of sticking out from it.  

The only other prob I have is the sidewalk.. take the time to make a 3d-tiled cartoon-colored sidewalk and it will look ever so-much better.  Try to avoid using textures, especially when they tile unevenly.

All in all, excellent job, I'd love to see a game done in this style as long as it had consistency throughout.  Kudos!

As far as speeding being "something most people don't do"...  anyone who claims that is so full of shit.  The speed limit here is 65.. I normally drive between 65-70 (stupid car shakes strangely at 65.0).  I am often passed by cars going probably about as fast as 90 MPH.  80-85 MPH drivers are quite common when traffic's low.  Perhaps few people speed above 100.  I've been driving for 11 years and have driven in about 20 states in the US..  speeding's common everywhere.  Speeding (especially above 80 mph)is idiocy, sure, I'll agree with that.  However, another common happening is people driving with alcohol in their system.  I'd much rather be in a car with someone driving 85 than with someone who's had "only a couple of beers."

We've gone off on a tangent here but what the hell?  I received 1 speeding ticket (42 in a 35..  cop didn't buy my Hitchhiker's Guide excuse either) and got assigned traffic school.  8 hours later, clean record, like magic.  

Fastest I ever went was 135 MPH.  I don't normally speed but I was on my way home on a long drive, curious how fast the car would go and there was nothing but road, shoulder & trees for miles.  I did that speed for about a minute then dropped back down to 65.  Kind of amazed my Hyundai Elantra Sport 5-speed would do it...  could've gone a little faster too, but that's way too damned dangerous.  No moral here..  stupid? Yes.  Fun? Hell yes.

On the separation of drives note: I've been doing my system the same way for awhile.  I partition the drive, having about 5 gigs for a c: windows partition and the rest for d:.  About every 2 weeks or so, I ghost the entire c: onto the d: so I have a known-good backup to go to.. every month I burn the oldest backup to a CD and delete it from the HD.  Thankfully, I haven't had to revert yet but should I get a major virus or my HD fail, I feel fairly secure.  It's also a bonus performance-wise as the C: is nicely defragged & optimized, along w/ the swap-file.

Alrighty..  The ribbon interface-cable, going from the HD to the motherboard, it's only got 2 connectors on it?  (not one near the middle?)  If so, you just need a cable w/ two connectors (usually comes w/ new HD's).  Or, if you want 2 HD's in there only to transfer files to the new one, switch the old HD for the CD and you should be set.

What happens when you don't have the window title held? Does display just freeze at its last state, or does it all go pink, or all black, or anything?
As an experiment, could you try changing your desktop color depth (ie. from 16 to 32 or vice versa) and see if that makes a difference?

Display merely freezes.  If run in full-screen or before dragging title for the first time, window displays black.  Experimented already, 16-bit color, 32-bit color, 256-color & full Hz range for monitor make no difference.  Also changed display drivers once more & monitor drivers.  Maybe I'm just screwed.  

Seeing the original photo would definately help people with specific advice.  In the meantime, that dude (yes, I know he looks like a chick- he's just feminine) up there has a lovely tutorial on photo-tracing stuff:
http://www.sylpher.com/kafka/tutorials/phototochartut.htm