Bartimaeus

The thing is, though, waiters/waitresses who earn their tips don't want tipping to go away, because they generally get paid at least a little better to often times a lot better via tips than they would get from the minimum wage. Depending on how the establishment handles tips, they may also not feel like reporting tips on their taxes because they feel like they can get away with it - even better for them. I think there was an experiment within the last year or so where an establishment expressly prohibited tips but guaranteed their wages - not because they wanted to eliminate tipping entirely, I'm sure, but because it's such a normalcy to tip that they wanted to make sure customers didn't feel obliged for no reason (presumably, after our tipping culture has changed to only tip for exceptional service, they would've let customers tip if they really wanted to again). There was a huge outrage by the waiters/waitresses, a lot of whom apparently quit. I'm not sure if they reverted back to allowing tips or not - I never got an update on the story. All that said, I hate our tipping culture and would prefer they be only given for exceptional service at worst (in reality, I don't even much like this - I feel like paying employees should be the employer's job, not the customer's - but this would be such a huge step up that it's not a big deal). I would also prefer that all full time employees be guaranteed a living wage in conjunction with this, so that it isn't so much of a moral dilemma in regards to younger, unskilled workers who simply can't make enough money elsewise. Such is life.

Well, I like this song even less than the other. Truth be told, I've just never really been a big fan of the whole "slow moaning" style of singing.... But hey, like you said, different strokes for different folks...

Well, I thought it was O.K. until the vocals...

Yeah, NOW I would want to start testing stuff in a different PC entirely...but you don't have one. Like I said, hardware troubleshooting is hard when you can't swap stuff out.

Ship it to me instead, :D

memtest86

Hardware is weird. I've had RAM work perfectly fine for a few weeks, then suddenly start causing the computer to crash every time after boot up for a few days, and then suddenly be fine again (and the cause being that it was actually defective after testing it with memtest86). I've also had a video card that was defective that was only having problems with a specific motherboard, but seemed to be fine in others. So, again, before you go through all that trouble of shipping it back (and especially considering how extraordinarily rarely CPUs actually break down or are defective), I would personally opt for memtest86-ing at least one stick and trying that (free program, in case you're wondering). But your mileage may vary.

You confirmed with swapping out RAM/Memtesting the RAM? Given that it's actually getting to desktop, my inclination would be RAM, not CPU. CPUs are extremely reliable* - I would make sure by memtest86-ing your RAM before shipping it back. *And when they fail, they usually fail spectacularly...

Personally, I prefer to just use a bootable Windows flash drive, because I don't actually use Linux, but installing Windows on a flash drive can be a bit of a hassle since Microsoft doesn't want you to do that for some reason and normally prevents the installer from doing so. Windows is also much more cumbersome than Linux, and it runs very slowly off of a generic USB drive. Now if you can get a nice one that has good read speeds...

Heh, that makes you sound like an old person. Something goes wrong once, the cause somehow ends up being totally misattributed, and then it's something that you invariably mention when certain parts and/or software are being discussed... For some reason, older people who aren't very computer-savvy seem to love to do this...

Yes...but you've already eliminated the possibility of troubleshooting by swapping out parts (which is pretty much the only conclusive way to test hardware), so no. I would go back to a single stick configuration of RAM to make sure that's not the problem. I doubt it is, based on the symptoms, but it doesn't hurt to try...beyond that, I don't really have any ideas. If you have a 32GB or more flash drive stick, set up a Windows installation on it to test with that. Failing that, you could try creating like a 32GB partition at the end of your current hard drive, setting your active system partition to be the new partition, and installing Windows on that new partition (which would allow you to set the original partition back to the active system partition later).

Which Roman Empire, which fall, and how are we defining "major feminist movement"?

You'd think, given how miserable my ideal weather sounds, that I'd also like fog...but I actually really don't like fog at all. To be honest, I'm just kind of a nyctophile...if it were up to me, I would never wake up during the day to begin with. Actually, if it were up to me, there wouldn't be any day at all...assuming no ill effects on crops or public health or the such.

To be fair to Polygon, I'm about as bad as they are when trying to play a FPS with a gamepad. For some reason, my brain can't quite grasp using two analogue sticks at once with shooters, and I play pretty similarly to a person who's never played games before. ...Of course, I'm not reviewing such games (and certainly not professionally), and if I was, I'd probably just stick to keyboard and mouse.

@Meshugger I heard about that a while ago - media and people didn't really care to talk about it then, I imagine they don't care that much now. It is kind of a weird story...

My ideal day is heavy clouds (heavy enough the day looks closer to dusk) with light rain and winds and cool (~60F) temperatures. Sun bad, high temperatures bad, humidity bad, no winds bad. So of course I live in central Minnesota, where I never have anything I want.

That was really painful to listen to - the three show hosts, that is. I couldn't believe that total nonsense the guy on the left was saying.

"BioWare storytelling is all about making you feel emotions in situations where you thought you might not." lol

How come these comic strips you post are always written so weirdly? Can't tell if it's supposed to be humorous or what...and the ones you've posted always feel like they lack any sort of punch...

That kinda crap could happen in EU4, too...for both armies and ships. It stopped being that big of a problem for armies after the major sieges and forts reworks, but could still be pretty annoying for fleets. I suppose I should really be trying Stellaris now, before the game collapses under its own weight of added mishmash DLC stuff. Or maybe I just won't ever bother...

I am not sure. Words of wisdom, I know.

Yes, I thought the first part of the statement you quoted was perfectly fine - Bernie has been much more of a "class leftist" than an "identity/label/group leftist" (or whatever you want to call it), even though he actually is really both. That second part, though, is obviously patently false, then.

I am surprised...weren't all of the Uncharted Playstation exclusives? I'm surprised that it would be available on PC... ...and from the quick research I just did, it's not, so yeah...

A sort of sense of tribalism, I guess? "My team won, your team lost, hardee-harr"? Or, alternatively, "My choice was the correct one, everyone else's (who didn't choose the same as me) wasn't, hardee-harr". That's most applicable for the console war stuff you mentioned, though - for something like Disney discontinuing Infinity, I would imagine the rationale is something more like, "You guys are doing this poorly, please either do it well or just stop cluttering up the market with your inferior product". You say "something they have no interest in", but someone like Hurlshot clearly does have an interest in something like Disney Infinity - it's just not living up to his standards, so he'd rather see it get better or just go away...and that's the end of it. It's hard to consider the human aspect of it (namely, people actually losing their livelihoods and the reality of such situations for so many people, including the employees' families), mainly because we have no idea who they are and have no real understanding that they really exist beyond some abstract "I guess somebody must've worked on this...", so it's easy to not consider them when quickly posting some off-the-cuff comment about the story on some random forums, .