Bartimaeus

Hey, I represent that! Yeah, I didn't have an alternative story to link instead.

I'm rather confused. Not upgrading to Windows 10 seems to be a sticking point for you...but you seem to be implying that you'd have to if you made a new rig, which you don't (especially as motherboard manufacturers are even conveniently still providing drivers on their websites for Windows 7 for new motherboards). I've built a bunch of new PCs for people in the last couple of years, and most of them have been Windows 7 machines (the biggest problem with Windows 7 for new builds is that it's very difficult to install an OS on SATA M.2 drives - and sometimes impossible for certain models). Further, your price for upgrading your current rig confuses me even more - you can get a very good 1TB SATA3 SSD for ~$300, your RAM for probably around $150, and the cooler...well, that depends on how far you want to go - probably as little as $50, though. @Gizmo: Yep, GPU costs are ridiculously terrible right now, which is making whole systems a much more attractive option than they used to be (because prices haven't affected them...at least as much...yet).

Did you not read his post? He didn't really say that it was difficult. A combat system being bad doesn't necessarily mean hard. I was bored to absolute tears playing out the majority of combat encounters using the same exact sequence of spells/abilities in the same exact way every time for the optimal results. Necessity is the mother of invention and variety is the spice of life and all that, and I think I played until around level 5 or 6 in PoE before I realized that there seemed to be very little of either on the player's side in the game and that I was really, really just tired of the combat system.

I'm also in favor of the "make our country not so terrible that apparently a bunch of people want to shoot up schools/each other" solution. Everything else is just symptom management at best. ...Of course, actually doing that is seemingly impossible, so back to symptom management we go.

I was going to put a warning that it was the DailyMail, but I forgot (...and also, I didn't know enough about the story itself to know whether or not anything was horribly inaccurate about it). Also, "poster of [my] talents"? What talents?

That is exactly what's happening, yes. Half the subreddit is going, "No no, guys, he's obviously planning something!", and the other half is dissenting and getting banned by the moderators for being "concern trolls", including a lot of long-time posters.

rotfl on Trump's recent pro-gun control and anti-due process comments. reddit's Trump subreddit is imploding right now. (e): Also, Bruce, you may want to get out of South Africa: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5443599/White-South-African-farmers-removed-land.html "[...] not calling for the slaughter of white people - at least for now." It's easy for an ethnic cleansing to transition to a genocide... Also, didn't Zimbabwe do this and essentially collapse as a result? Not exactly the best footsteps to follow in.

This is still not fixed either, no? Can't check right now, because of mobile phone. Does the forum getting any updates anyway? What about security issues? I had my data stolen on quite a lot boards in the past couple years, seeing my "have I been pwned?" counter steadily go up. Makes me wonder when the Obsidian Board will show up on the list. Forums are a pretty terrible vector for security threats, given that almost no important information is stored on them besides an email address with only very few notable exceptions. Maybe they can get your password if the security is truly terrible - anyone that has their email password the same as all the stuff that's registered to that email to is going to be in a world hurt sooner or later regardless, though.

It's not against presidents, it's against administrations (see the top text) - though the presidents themselves are obviously included. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/1/11/1619079/-Comparing-Presidential-Administrations-by-Arrests-and-Convictions-A-Warning-for-Trump-Appointees

For sure. Maybe a few of the people in his campaign would've eventually gotten busted for some of the shady financial dealings that went on during his campaign, but at this point over a hundred indictments have been filed against 19 people, with more to come. Firing Comey as he did magnified the investigation and its scope many times over. Here's a fun table: It'll be neat to see the eventual totals for Trump. Off to a fast start (though not all of the 100 indictments can...yet...be laid on Trump's administration, since some of them were the Russian nationals who have not been established as being party to the Trump administration).

I envy you (and anyone else). Not that mine hurt all the time but they don't feel "normal" either. "Pinching/grip" strength is nearly gone, some days super hard to pull off things like yogurt foil tops or hold dishes w/out dropping them. Although most games don't require a lot from those two fingers, thankfully. Thumb just sits on the spacebar for example. But damnit, I'm going to keep gaming thru it until the fingers fall off. I do hands and finger exercises all the time these days, and that seems to help with pain and dexterity some. My hands are too valuable to let rot away from repetitive motion injury and carpal tunnel syndrome, and never mind old age!

Hilariously, we wouldn't even be talking about this if Nixon Trump hadn't repeatedly fired or attempted to fire everyone looking into it. Could've been something that the FBI director was handling internally at the FBI...but then Trump fired him and said he fired him because of the Russian thing on Twitter. Talk about the height of stupidity.

Now we have the Democrats' memo, which confirms that Nunes' was a load of crap. And now Fox News says the Democrats should be more concerned with the Russian interference than taking political jabs. Maybe if you and your party stopped interfering with the investigation...

Spirited Away. It was really...disappointing. First twenty, twenty-five minutes made me think it was going to be amazing...but everything sort of just kept falling apart with very unsatisfyingly used cliches and underdeveloped plot and characters. I think I consciously realized about 2/3rds of the way through that something seemed terribly off, and that there just hadn't been enough time to do or setup things right. Too many instant or convenient solutions, too much corny and also kind of phony-sounding dialogue (in terms of writing), and characters that I just didn't care that much for (which is really weird, because it's usually very easy for me to like characters in these sorts of films - I thought the main character was fine, but besides that...). I think this is the most famous of the Ghibli movies, but by the halfway mark, I was the least into it of all of the ones I've seen so far. I'm not sure what happened - maybe I missed something and need to give it another go some other time.

Well, yeah, it's been over ten years since EP2. These days, they're just solid singleplayer shooters with kind of hamfisted dialogue and story (actually, most heavily story-driven games STILL have this problem these days). At the time, though, original HL2 was revolutionary. That's sort of what happens to games that set trends and inspire copycats - other people take the formula and run with it, most of it for the worse, but some of it for the better.

I don't read his reviews enough to know whether or not he's actually a joke. The thing I look for in a critic is a consistent voice. Every critic has their own tastes, and their logic and rational for what they like or don't like is highly slanted from those tastes. Naturally, you aren't going to always agree with a critic. That's okay - as long as you understand where the critic is coming from, and they're consistent with their body of work. I don't always agree with Jay and Mike on Half in the Bag, because we value a lot of different things, but I usually have a pretty good feeling as to whether or not they'll like something because I feel I have a good grip on their character and the things they value vs. what they don't (and when they surprise me, they usually have decent explanations as to why). I also find them to be pretty insightful and rational, as well as analytical and amusing. Pretty much everything I look for in a critic! So the worst kind of critic, to me, is someone you can't figure out, someone you can read one review and go, "Yeah, what they're saying makes total sense," while another review you go, "WTF are they on about? Are they high/drunk/insane/biased/bought? Nothing they're saying follows their previous review(s)!". The lack of consistency makes them useless for determining whether you want to try something or not. I don't know if Armond White falls more into that category, because I don't read his reviews or care enough to do so, but I get the feeling from other people that that's the case.

Didn't I say my point?

No, he's just considered a joke for being an awful critic of little use to anybody. He called Man of Steel "the Godfather of superhero movies", he loved Jack & Jill and Grown Ups, says various beloved movies like Pulp Fiction, Up, the Toy Storys, the recent Batman movies, etc. are all bad (...even though the Man of Steel movie basically tried to copycat the Batman movies and super misguidedly turn Superman into Christopher Nolan's dark and tortured Batman). He does, however, have good entertainment value for his wacky reviews. He has a pretty consistent track record of just being a really bad (or at the very least incredibly bizarre) critic.

He's considered a joke for being perpetually (and painfully) contrarian. A somewhat contrarian review from non-joke(?) reviewers.

From Up on Poppy Hill. I keep going into these always expecting to hate them, but instead I always end up at least liking them. Fairly similar to Whisper of the Heart, I think I'd put it a little lower, though, for various reasons. Still, an enjoyable watch. Stand by Me. I don't know what it is about him, but I really, really do not like Kiefer Sutherland...so this movie got kind of close to what I imagine an ideal role in a movie would be for him. It was otherwise a solid watch. Similarly, I recently tried watching something called Dark City at the advice of a friend, and I only lasted about five minutes before Mr. Sutherland appeared on screen and I burst out laughing and had to stop watching, for the movie was utterly ruined. Everything in my head just screams, "It's stinking, lousy Kiefer Sutherland," whenever I see him on screen, and I don't know why. You'd think he'd shot my dog with how much I recoil and cringe when I learn he's in something.

I think the "what do you like/prefer" questions are there for their research purposes as well as to illustrate what you think you think vs. your results (as flawed as they may be).

Shouldn't Congress be the one considering that?

"If you are unprepared to encounter interpretations that you might find objectionable, please do not proceed further." I did the fat-thin one, and came up with a strong automatic preference for thin people compared to fat people. The test is biased in of itself, though, because they make you do it one way the first time (where you learn to associate "good" things with thin people), and then reverse it for the second part of the test...by which time you've already had it ingrained in you to do it that way. I wish they'd done it in reverse, or more accurately, went back to the original way, because doing it in that manner introduces bias in of itself. Since it's difficult to avoid that original mental programming, perhaps it would be best to test 50% of people going one way, and then 50% the other way, to see how much that truly affects the results. That would be more about empiric results than individual, though.

Microsoft Flight Simulator X DLC dev included malware in their DLC designed to extract Chrome user info and possibly passwords...for the purpose of identifying pirates to sue them (maybe - there was a report of a user suddenly having fraudulent payments almost right after having purchased and played this game). https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/02/19/flight-sim-group-put-malware-in-a-jet-and-called-it-drm/ ...Of course, information obtained in this way is almost certainly not admissible in court (especially European), but at least it allows them to make threatening letters to try to extract payment out of scared people.

But there are so many toxic online gaming communities these days, how can you pick just one?