Bartimaeus

Use "other" and write in an explanation, I guess?

https://www.goldenears.philips.com/en/challenge.html# A pretty cool test. Some parts much harder than others: unfortunately, to unlock the next stage of tests, you have to finish the entire first set, which takes some time (and most of the beginning levels are really easy and a waste of time). Hardest ones for me were the last of the spectral balance ones, the MP3 artifacts, and reverberation. Trying to tell the difference between a well-encoded "low quality" 128kbps MP3 and a higher quality file is pretty danged hard. (edit) This is ridiculous. 18 different answers to choose from each part of the level...but I'm so close to finishing this...

Not sure how this relevant to my point in this thread but I believe abortion in certain cases is fine and the decision should be the women's choice Volourn is, I think, creating an analogy mainly in reply to this: That is, those operating abortion clinics know it will offend fundamentalist Christians...who might conceivably raise hell...so shut down the abortion clinics in the name of making sure potential maniacs are not offended. One could make the argument that by shutting down the abortion clinics, you may similarly be offending militant pro-lifers. However, one can extend Volourn's analogy by simply saying that you might be offending those who fervently believe in freedom and exercising your rights, regardless of whatever silliness it is for. The idea is you shouldn't shut stuff down simply because it might be controversial - that's a pissant way to run a supposedly "free" society.

It's idiotic that they're not giving you a reason. What country (or area of the world, if you prefer) are you from? Banning by IP (or really, do ANYTHING by IP) is a truly stupid practice that serves little practical purpose besides being a minor inconvenience to those who can be bothered to spend fifteen seconds to Google the myriad of ways to get around it, as well as ban multitudes of random people in non-first world countries, as it's not uncommon for entire blocks (or more) of a city/town to share the same IP range in places such as Southeast Asia. If you're not actually just wasting everyone's time, I suggest trying to get in contact with a dev or something.

The cost per gigabyte is still too high for me to just let copious amounts of space go to virtually no use. Although...that'll be what happens anyways if I don't use it at all... Dangit, why did I have to impulse buy that dumb Samsung?

Ah...the Infinity Engine technique. Pickpocket for reward, talk to again for XP and double reward because whoever was programming the game was clearly stupid (Tolgerias's multiple Rings of the Ram come to mind), kill them as they're leaving the map for more XP as well as whatever they currently have on them (there's a million examples where you can do this, including, again, Tolgerias), and since their variables have been set as if they're alive/not pickpocketed for their next appearance elsewhere because of shoddy coding, rinse and repeat the process for wherever they show up next (Elminster/Terminsel and his Ring of Protection +2 that you can pickpocket each time he appears comes to mind). Woo.

"Speed benefit"? What speed benefit? There's virtually no (appreciable) speed benefit in switching over to an SSD for music file playing (e: or really even most games - the only games I've tried so far that have had significant loading times improvement over an HDD is EU4 - where the difference is admittedly huge, for some reason, even though it's a fairly small game - and Stalker...but Stalker hasn't worked well in other ways on SSDs I've tried, for some reason, so meh). That's just taking up quality SSD space that could be utilized more effectively other ways...uh...if I had other things I could utilize the space for, that is. Plus, noise is not a factor - case muffles most any noise, and the box fans I run 24/7 for white noise (I have permanent and multiple forms of tinnitus so it's necessary) cover up the rest.

I say that now...having already used a 120GB SSD for two years or so. My 1TB HDD has stuck around 50% full for the last 5 years or so, and my 120GB SSD has stuck around 60% full the entire time I've had it. I regretted purchasing the Samsung drive about 5 minutes after I got it, because I knew I wouldn't use it...and now I really know I won't use it, haha. I also have another 3TB HDD that I have no use for at all besides making backups of my 1TB occasionally, and then letting it sit in storage. So yeah, I don't think I'll be using 500GB of SSDs for the foreseeable future. I don't use all that much storage outside of my FLAC music collection - which would be a giant waste to put on an SSD...and so far, I have not had great luck with SSD reliability, so I wouldn't be willing to trust one for important file storage, anyways - which is also why I externalize my personal user folder (My Documents, AppData, etc.) outside of my C:\ drive and onto my D:\ storage drive. I don't trust any kind of drive in general, though, which is why I have the 3TB for backups. Losing my music collection that I've manually collected (some of which I've ripped myself) and organized to my own standards would probably make me want to kill myself. This 1TB Seagate that I've had for about 5 or 6 years now (that has a little over 4 years of up-time in straight hours according to its SMART data) has got to go sometime or another, and I'll be ready for it.

I wanted them to get Mariota, because with all of the ridiculous trade rumors that just kept going on and on and on for weeks prior to the draft, it really felt like SOMETHING should've happened. Oh well.

"Shovel Knight is a 2014 2D side-scrolling platform game, developed and published by independent video game developer Yacht Club Games" Enough said, I think.

I rather dislike the character designs. Rare almost always has had character designs I like, so it's weird that I don't like them here. Best of luck to them, though - why do KS campaigns always have such low financial goals? There's no way PoE would've turned out to be anything more than an extremely barebones CRPG if it had only gotten its minimum funding, and there's no way this would turn out to be anything if this only got a measly 200k. And developing for consoles, too? I would expect 5 million to be the bare minimum for making a mostly full-fledged game...but hey, apparently other people know more about funding these things than I do.

Uh...combat XP has pretty much absolutely nothing to do with PoE's combat problems. In fact, I am glad they had the foresight to remove it - otherwise it would be even more unbearable than it is if they were trying to encourage you to fight every single battle possible. At least you have the OPTION to avoid some percentage of combat with little to no consequences.

And GB picked up another safety in the first round for a second year in a row...weird. I've heard that he'll actually play as a CB - wonder how that'll work out.

Uhh, why's that? The only problem I've heard about Samsung drives was the time-based issue with the 840 Evo? I COULD use both of them...but I have no need. 250GB was serious overkill for my needs already - double that is ridiculous.

I don't recall the better drops bit - perhaps because drops have always been relatively worthless regardless, so I'm not particularly concerned - but in regards to backpack space...yeah...so spend the $1 or whatever that it took to unbecome a "free" account.

Could you expound upon this? Back when I actually played, the complaint was that the people who BOUGHT the game were being shafted, not that new players were.

I bought a Samsung 850 EVO 250GB for $85. My previous PNY drive died recently, and it was a good enough deal, so why not? On the other hand, PNY just shipped me a 240GB drive in replacement of my 120GB for no apparent reason, and now I'm unsure what to do with this one...It's also apparently not SandForce based, unlike the previous two, and is...Silicon Motion-based? Don't know if that's better or worse. http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/5720/silicon-motion-sm2246en-ssd-controller-preview/index5.html The controller in question. Better, I think? http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1243?vs=1396 Comparison of the two drives (the ADATA drive uses the same controller). Not very different in most regards - besides sequential write, where the PNY falls behind a bit. But that hardly matters.

This reminds me so much of the Diablo 2 soundtrack. Though Diablo 2's music's more intense bits were usually more intense thanks to drums, not heavier orchestra in general.

I played through roughly 99% of Amnesia...man, a while ago. Four years back, maybe? Then I reformatted for some reason or another, and forgot to keep my saves. I never saw the ending, as I couldn't make myself go through certain parts again. I did play through and beat Penumbra rather recently, though, which is pretty similar. Isn't this more appropriate for the "what are you playing thread"? (edit) Also, I've heard news that they're finally, FINALLY fixing the durability bug for Dark Souls 2 on PC for the un-"remastered" version. Apparently, it wasn't a feature all this time after all, contrary to what they claimed at one point! Here's the grand total amount of money that I'm willing to spend on FromSoftware games in the future: $0

Not a bad idea. What class would be best for it, do you think?

Generally, people upload them to third party image hosting websites, like imgur, or puu.sh, or photobucket, etc. and then post the links to them. Imgur would likely suit your needs best.

Ah...yes, if I started up again, there's no way I'd try anything harder than normal. Hard is doable, no doubt about it, but such a chore. I don't envy anyone who played through on PotD. *shudder*

What difficulty are you playing on, Keyrock, out of curiosity?

Fallout 4 would be the logical choice, no doubt...but perhaps Bethesda will not wish to stick its hands in this controversy again. We'll see, I suppose.