h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Oh, and by the way, if every other option fails - is it a very tricky procedure to install a new graphics card into a laptop?

A laptop yes. Very tricky. The graphics chips are normally attached to the mainboard inside the laptop and so in that respect it's non upgradeable. I've never heard of one that could be done like that. If it was a desktop/tower machine then it's an easy job.

*casts a very evil Hex on MindArk, the company behind Entropia*

Just got this message from a co-player - could someone translate it for me please?

'I've also been using outdated gfx card integrated in laptop. The lag and gfx suck now but i can get on and play. I use 3-d analyze to launch and play it, bypassing the entropia log in. It is a free download and takes some tinkering. tommti-systems.com'

Uhhh.... what?

They found a backdoor into the game so that they can use an older video card.

Can I use it too - and if so, how?

But if you bypass the login, how do you identify yourself and recover your investment?

In worst case scenario, I take the train to Gothenborg, storm their HO and demand my money back, preferably with a knife to the throat of highest

*slow volcany eruption breeding*

Or you could storm their HQ and take a computer hostage, one with the right sort of card.

I call it impossible Ti. Laptops are not designed to be modular, so they suffer from static hardware configurations for the most part. Since laptops (the exceptiong bing the Alienware brand) are not designed for gaming it's not surprising.

>>Laptops are not designed to be modular

That is mostly correct, I have seen many laptops that have a swappable video card. They all happen to be Dell laptops though.

The bypass worked - it turned out to be a way to enter the game without using the launcher, but you're still able to log on.

But the down-graded graphics look like crap - tomorrow I'll pop in at one of the major PC gaming halls in central Stockholm to check if they have Entropia installed and if not, if they could install it for me.

Last time I was there (together with Hatifnat who was visiting) it was filled with male teenagers, and the air foul and smelling of sweat. However, according to their site, they've expanded and now have more room, so hopefully the air quality will have improved.

They have special discounts for female players in an attempt to get a more balanced mix of customers - I wonder if they have discounts for people who have left teenagehood behind long ago as well?

Someone's trying to hack into my wireless network.

I've been having an odd, come-and-go problem with my wireless network for 2 or 3 days, which I attributed to faulty equipment. So I unplugged the suspect component and forgot about it, since my iMac is hard wired it was no big deal. But now my niece is home for spring break and was complaining about intermittent network access from her laptop, and my brother complained about the same thing, so I booted up my laptop and I was also having the same problem. So this time I unplug the wireless router on the theory that it was overheating (someone put a rag on top of it - ok, it was me <embarassed&gt.

Then I walked around my house with my laptop trying to determine if a neighbor's signal was interfering, and noticed an unusually strong "ad hoc" network signal. A few minutes later, a second "ad hoc" signal with *exactly* the same network name as mine shows up but with all the wrong security settings. I think it was an attempt to get us to join the wrong network and allow them to log our passwords or whatever.

So I plug everything back in and reconfigure my network to use a new name and remain "closed", and suddenly everything works perfectly. And 20 minutes later these "ad hoc" networks are gone.

<-- isn't to blame, for once

OK, wish me luck. I am off to the datacentre to turn up my new network. It's time to see if I know what I am doig.

Traveller in Time without anything dramatic
" cam our as

"

So how did go, Marv?

/* A stolen "it" beams itself wirelessly into the previous sentence */

Still working on it. We are live, but we have a few more problems that we are trying to iron out. I am currently on hour 11 in the datacenter.

There are 4 wireless networks in Lincoln: mine, the state, one of my neighbors, and one other I can't identify with a very low strength. In order to steal bandwidth, a person would have to come park outside my house.