Loney

I noticed other computers outside of our house using our WiFi, and I do believe they were eating up quite a bit of bandwidth since everything they entered our router, my Youtube videos load at a few kilobytes per minute. I've triple checked the firmware was correct, and I was connected to the router via Ethernet.

Well, I fried my router and modem when I installed the firmware update to see if it would fix the problem. On the positive side, we got two other exactly same routers on hand for replacement. On the bad side, the same routers are most likely to have the same problem and I'm banned from managing the wireless stuff by my parents.

1. WEP is a broken encryption, it can be broken in minutes because of a major flaw. WPA is also broken and although it's more secure than WEP, it still can be cracked. 2. I tried turning off Intel PROset, but the two Windows xp laptops still have trouble. The Window 7 laptops and the iPod Touch didn't come with a third-party wireless software. 3. I tried resetting it, it didn't help. 4. We have two other exact same routers, because my dad felt we needed backups just in case if the router dies. And he will not buy new ones until all of the routers become fried from age. I'd say that would take about 20 years.

I would also recommend replacing the thermal paste. Rarely do manufacturers use quality thermal paste.

Router: Trendnet TEW-432BRP, C1.1 R I turned on encryption for the first time and set it to WPA2, PSK and AES (cipher type) a week ago, and that's when the wireless connection for all four of our laptops and an iPod Touch started dropping frequently at random times. It never happened before for the past few years until the encryption was set. We have to manually connect to the router as the iPod Touch's wireless manager, Intel PROset (installed onto Window xp) and Window 7's wireless manager refuse to automatically connect. We have to repeatedly attempt to connect because the programs would say something like, "Cannot connect". Rebooting the computers and the router didn't help. I also turned on Extended Range Mode but it didn't help The connection drops even when the wireless signal is at max strength. I haven't updated the firmware because it only fixed a packet size bug, and I'm not sure if it's related to the connection drops.

What is your fan's cooling system configuration? Where are the intake and exhaust vents located? No laptops are created equal, and the same thing applies to laptop coolers (especially active ones that come with fans). If your laptop inhales air from the bottom and vents it out from the side, don't buy a laptop cooler that pulls air from the bottom and out the side. You'll create a vacuum and it will choke the cooling fan, and not much cooling will be done by the laptop cooler. Even worse if the laptop cooler is too small, because that means the laptop cooler's exhaust air will be quickly be inhaled again. If there's no direct intake vent to the cooling fan or if it looks too small, take off the bottom panel (if possible) and see if it helps.

I have a question, is broadband really broadband when dialup is faster? Youtube videos are constantly loading around 2 kilobits per second lately. Webpages and pictures are fine, though I suspect my ISP is targeting Youtube for bandwidth throttling.

Well, here's a link to Tom's Hardware's list of recommended SSDs: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-price-ssd,3070.html You get what you paid for, though you will never find HDDs that can match SSDs' speed without costing as much or more than SSDs... Never underestimate the stupidity of humans and what they can do with fat, or supposedly fat wallets...

I'm on a "5 Mb/s" internet service plan that charges $65 per month, and the ISP is the only one around here. The other ISP that services the parts of the town but not my neighborhood charges like $70 for a 2 Mb/s connection. This is what I get during the morning and early afternoon, when I rarely use the internet, if at all: No you don't. This is what I get at night, when I actually need the internet: I'll get newer benchmarks when it's at night here. Anyone want to play a multiplayer game with me, such as Battlefield 3, Modern Warfare 3 or Team Fortress 2? I might lag just a little. Welcome to the club.

There's a more simple way of getting SC4 to run on another drive, if you're okay with Command Prompt: https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/topic/46084-questions-regarding-region-and-plugin-folders/page__p__1200601__fromsearch__1#entry1200601 If you need the info ASAP, here's a straight lead: https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/topic/46084-questions-regarding-region-and-plugin-folders/page__view__findpost__p__1198436

Simple solution: Build Higher Wouldn't carbon fiber reinforced concrete be sufficient? I know that they're much lighter than standard concrete and last for nearly a century compared to 10-20 years for unreinforced concrete.

Redid the conditions:

It's 2012 on a planet exactly same as Earth, with some exceptions... -Human population: 11.6 billion -Fossil fuel supply: Estimated to last less than five years if fuel consumption doesn't decrease (and it won't), almost completely depleted. You get the idea of how much greenhouse gas was emitted. -Clean water supply: Less than 50% of it remain due to a combination of extensive pollution, over-usage and rapidly changing climate. -Alternative energy technology: While everything is in the 21st century, this field is still in the 1980's. Aka, still in infancy. -Forests: 99% cleared, all of the rainforests have been cleared. -Coral reefs and kelp forests: Extinct -Oceans: All commercially harvested wild fish species are threatened or endangered due to a combination of massive overfishing and water pollution. -Diseases: Many of the curable fungus/bacterial diseases are now incurable as most of them became super bugs, resistant to almost all antibiotics. -Political situation: Like late 19th century Europe, aka, extreme nationalism throughout the world. Now throw in arrogant, incompetent, power-hungry leaders that rule major countries. -Weapons technology: It's in the 2030's, aka, very advanced. Oh, and don't forget about massive stockpiles of WMDs. I've been researching and trying to predict what would specifically happen to each major country (for example, what would happen in China or UK?), if all of the above occurred. I know for sure that WWIII would start while all of the countries experience severe political instability.

Get the cheapest SSD you can find, SC4's loading time will be much lower. It will be godsend when you're loading 5+ million pop cities with 3+ GB of plugins. For the processor, assuming it's a desktop, the Sandy Bridge i3 2130 is the fastest dual core (3.4 GHz) and it's quite cheap, only for $138. If you have a larger budget though, you can get a quad core i5 2500K (3.3 GHz, no hyperthreading) for $216, buy a powerful cooling system, and overclock the i5. Intel demonstrated that they managed to clock it to 4.9 GHz on air cooling, I think you can get close to 6 GHz with decent water cooling. AMD's Bulldozer processors are the last thing you would want for heavy single threaded programs. It was designed for servers dealing with heavily threaded workload, and AMD decided to port it to desktop computers. Unless if SC4 can use 8+ threads, stay away.

There's one problem, when I'm running SC4 without forcing it to one core, all of the cores report 25% load while SC4 is running like molasses. I see as not thread spreading, but thread bouncing. I'm fairly sure a processor with two loaded cores and the other two cores parked would produce less heat than a processor with all cores loaded. If you're only web browsing and typing, a quad core would be an overkill as a dual core would be sufficient. However, for gaming, quad cores are recommended since more and more newer games support more than two cores. Hexa-core is often considered an overkill for gaming. On my old laptop, even though the dual-core T7200 (2.0 GHz, Core Duo 2) processor has similar performance for single-threaded benchmarks/programs, one of the games that I frequently play uses more than two cores and there's a noticeable lower performance. Even with graphics set to absolute minimum, the quad core outdid the dual core in frame rates per second. How do I get Window 7 to recognize that I don't need all four cores active for a large single thread and some background tasks? And if there's no solution to that, how do I turn off two of the cores to force Turbo Boost to kick in?