The very many questions-not-worth-their-own-thread question thread XXIV

[Dachs]

"Zero-hundred hours" is more difficult to say than "twenty-four-hundred hours"? How odd.

It's not more difficult to say. It's just virtually never used. What makes it easier, at least for members of the military, is that a watch or shift would end at 2400 - which makes sense, as a terminating point - and the relief would be at 0001.

 

[Mise]

In Japan, lots of cafes/bars display opening hours such as 17:00-28:00. Weird at first, but it makes so much sense.

Oh God, that's genius!

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

2800 would be 4AM the next day?

 

[Traitorfish]

I suppose it makes a certain kind of sense.

 

[Borachio]

We could just do away with all this. And measure absolute time in seconds since the big bang.

(I have a feeling my suggestion is flawed, in some way.)

 

[bhsup]

"x, y, and z"

"x, y and z"

Which? I prefer the top with the comma after the y. That's how we were taught, but I see it mostly anymore in print as the bottom one.

 

[Leoreth]

Depends on the context. If there's no ambiguity without it I don't use it.

But then you have the classic "I was partying with the strippers, Bill Clinton and George Bush" vs. "I was partying with the strippers, Bill Clinton, and George Bush" ambiguity where it's appropriate.

 

[madviking]

for a second i thought dachs became a mod

 

[Zelig]

"x, y, and z"

"x, y and z"

Which? I prefer the top with the comma after the y. That's how we were taught, but I see it mostly anymore in print as the bottom one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

I have a problem. I recently purchased a laptop, and I cannot get programs to run on a full-screen resolution on it. Both Sim City 4 and Civilization 3 insist on squaring up. I've tried changing the resolutions in-game, it doesn't work. Huge margins on the sides of the screen remain black and unused. I've gotten it to happen before, on my old computer, which was a wider-than-normal screen, but a desktop. I'm nearly positive that I didn't do anything on it to make these programs do that. But how can I make this happen now?

 

[Cutlass]

Did you check that the program is trying to display the same dimensions that windows is trying to display?

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

It's not a possible setting. My screen resolution is 1366 x 768. Neither of those programs offer that setting, or anything like it. They're all 1026x768 or something of that general ratio, which yields the square I described.

 

[Cutlass]

So if the game won't step up to that resolution, can you try to step windows down to what the game can handle? A problem I've run into is that they just are not displaying the same, and the game tries to change that, which screws with what windows is trying to display, which results in a poor outcome.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

If I do that, then my display will always be that size, and not utilize the full screen potential, right?

 

[Cutlass]

Pretty much. I don't know of any better tradeoff.

 

[bhsup]

For SimCity 4, might give this a read:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1879359

For Civ3, add "keepres=1"to your civilization.ini file (or ptw.ini or conquests.ini)

 

[Zelig]

Civ3 widescreen: http://www.wsgf.org/dr/civilization-iii (Though upgrading to civ4 is a better option.)
Sim City 4 widescreen: http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Sim_City_4#Widescreen_resolution

 

[caketastydelish]

Cheezy the Wiz mentioning the Oxford Comma reminded me of the Vampire Weekend song of the same name.

 

[Camikaze]

2800 would be 4AM the next day?

I think that's the idea.