Bartimaeus

I would think that that's because a legal punishment isn't required nor appropriate, (in the case of infidelity).

Morality, (at least for this issue), doesn't really interest me. Other people's subjective morals are hardly likely to be of interest to me unless they raise interesting, new points/perspectives...of which there is almost certainly to be none of in regards to this subject, as it's such a dry, burnt topic that everyone seems to already have entrenched view points regarding. Nor am I really interested in detailing my own, equally subjective thoughts on any issues such as this in a forums as wildly polemic as these can be. Consequently, I'm more interested in the legal aspect, and would like to see the discrimination made between the two for this discussion so I can either ignore or follow this topic, accordingly.

Are we talking about in a legal or a moral sense? Your first question was "piracy or not?", when makes me think legal; your second is "is it bad or not?": which is it?

I love rainy days. In fact, I would very much like it if it were raining and semi-dark outside all the time, (discounting any other effects, like floods, that might result). Depends on what's in it. Could range from not caring hardly at all to contemplating suicide. Fix that crap. Throw it away if it's unfixable.

Very interesting. I, too, am curious as to whether it's true. If it is, well...previously, I was uncaring as to whether I'd end up getting a Z87 or a Z97 board for my 4770k, since it's unlikely I'd upgrade my CPU within the next five years with it. However, if it is true and actually begins to be implemented, the new speeds would completely ruin current SATA 3 capabilities - nevermind what they'll be in a few years - necessitating a jump to SATA Express/M.2 that I previously thought was not worth it. Even those might not be enough for the next few years if it's really as good as that article makes it out to be. I'll have to keep an eye on any further developments in the next few weeks as I'm considering a motherboard purchase.

I played NWN2/MotB on Core difficulty, and could never make myself control any character but my own. I don't know about Hardcore, but regular Core was pretty dang easy. The camera always infuriated so much that I refused to deal with it as much as possible. How much that game would've benefited by having a proper camera system...or simply being 2D. Although...it didn't even begin to compare to the absolute horror that was the Dragon Age: Origin's camera, so I guess there's that - that was nearly enough to reduce me to tears at times. I'll never play Dragon Age again for just that reason, nevermind all the others. All the time wasted trying to navigate the stupid "personal" camera so that you can actually see anything, having to readjust every five to ten freaking seconds if you're anywhere you might be making >=90 degree turns, (e.g. those tunnels in the beginning of MotB - those were a huge pain in NWN2...can't even imagine how terrible it'd be in Dragon Age)...or a completely non-functioning isometric camera that gets you murdered over and over because it doesn't let you see what you're going to be running into because the developers thought it'd be a fantastic idea to not be able to move your camera at least as far as the first archers you run into can shoot you from - no, instead, it's closer to only half as long as that...

Yep. 6-12 months here, generally, depending on the game in question. I haven't pre-ordered or bought at release an AAA game in many years.

Tried out Steam's "In-Home Streaming" today. Seems to work pretty well, though it seems to depend a bit on the game you're playing. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was playable, but had minor input lag. Not too bad, but it was noticeable, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a game where any amount of input lag is very bad. Still, like I said, not too bad - I was able to pick up my previous save in the middle of the Red Forest and make my way to Lab X19. Counter-Strike worked perfectly. Hitman 2: Silent Assassin didn't really work at all - massive input lag, and video glitches that weren't displaying on my desktop that were displaying on the streamed-to computer. Overall, I think, good stuff for something that's still in beta. Still seems like it needs a little work, though, but that's to be expected. Might also be limited by the crappy video card I'm still using - not entirely sure. I thought that at first for S.T.A.L.K.E.R., but when Hitman 2, a game that's less demanding by several orders of magnitudes, did much worse, and then CSS did perfect, I'm not so sure.

Penumbra: Black Plague is significantly superior to Overture, IMHO, you should check that game out. It, like Amnesia, doesn't have any weapons, though it is possible to kill enemies via environment. Mostly, though, like Amnesia, it's about avoiding combat altogether. There are some fantastic mind****s in Black Plague. I have all three on Steam...or actually, I have none on Steam, but I have a good friend who does who is Family Sharing the games (and about 300 others - thank you, Valve ) with me. Thanks - I'll probably try it out eventually. Want to finish Hitman 2 or Terranigma first before I begin any new games, though.

I've never played the Portal 2 multiplayer. Beat Penumbra: Overture about a week ago. Fun game. I actually enjoyed it more than Amnesia, although I wish the combat had been made harder. Much too easy to simply smite most baddies if you learn how to use the "weapons" in the game. Still working on Hitman 2: Silent Assassin. I'm about...15, maybe?...missions in. All Silent Assassin ratings so far. Weirdly, the first few missions were the hardest thus far, with that three stage snow mission being an outlier, while most everything else has been fairly easy. Eh.

Pretty sure, as a Half-Life player, that the inspiration for Bioshock Infinite came from System Shock and System Shock 2, not from any Half-Life games. Yes...but it's arguable that unlike its predecessors, BioShock 1 and BioShock 2, BioShock: Infinite is inspired quite a bit (more) from Half-Life (2). I think it took elements from Half-Life 2 it abstained from using in the previous two entries and ran with them and just kept running.

A most interesting effect. I'm not familiar with the original song, but it seems to sound quite good for a song being played roughly at 1/4th its normal speed. My own tests make their own interesting cases, too - it's only unfortunate that it tends to leave you with gigantically long songs... Songs with drums (or other heavy bass instruments) seem to fare poorly. So do songs with long, heavy notes. Interesting and fun.

You might try Cheat Engine and hook it to your browser (or whatever), and set the browser to 100x speed or something. Not sure if it would work, as it depends on how it's "speaking" to you, but it might be worth a try.

Sorry: I'm not entirely sure what I was thinking when I posted that, as you were mostly correct. I simply felt as though you were giving much more importance to those rather minor (in my opinion) connotations than was appropriate, (to my credit, at least, I didn't actually *contest* those connotations specifically). Obviously, the context is important, too, as you have rightfully pointed out. Apologies.

Indeed. The one I linked to is fairly high quality, though - Seasonic design and all. Price does not necessarily relate to "cheapness", especially in the 400-600w range. I think it's rather insane to pay $150-$200 for a higher efficiency model, (like the Seasonic Platinum Edition you mentioned earlier), when their levels of reliability are not *that* far apart. Though it does also depend on how much you push the PSU - if you're pushing it hard, you would want to go as high quality as possible...except at that point, unless you're considering electricity bills, you should probably just get a slightly lower quality PSU at a little higher wattage for half the price. (P.S. Not sure why the text of my link is to a newegg page, but then goes to reddit. I must've screwed up somewhere, haha - not that it really matters, since the topic was already removed from the subreddit a little bit after I posted my previous message for already being expired.) Funny anecdote: my mother has been using this piece of garbage for roughly the past 4, 5 years. It's a joke of a PSU that I wouldn't use to power a toaster, much less my desktop, but she's been using it with no problems - probably related to the fact that her components don't push it very hard. I gave her an old OCZ ModXStream of mine so that she doesn't end up blowing up her computer.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371059 Wouldn't be enough for SLI, Keyrock, but it's a fairly cheap, high quality semi-modular Seasonic unit for a single card setup, if you're interested. Edit: I lied. $25 MIR expired yesterday. Still being advertised, though...darnit, reddit!

800W seems about correct to me for a SLI of two 780 TIs - maybe 750W with a Gold or Platinum, but...no need to push it. I generally follow this list (combined with that realhardtechx page...Humanoid posted earlier to make sure you're getting what you think you're getting) when buying PSUs. It's not perfect, (and it's not complete), but it seems to generally be a good guide. From my time following http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapcsales/, it seems kind of rare that good deals for higher wattage PSUs are done, (whereas there are deals for the 400-600W range posted at least every few days, it seems). Best of luck.

"Female" and "male" flow off the tongue better for me than "man" and "woman". I've never liked the latter two so I generally do not use them, (with the rare case of "man" as part of a phrase, such as, "What were you thinking, man?"). Define female: noun: female; plural noun: females 1. a female person, animal, or plant. Usage defines, unfortunately. The "weirdness" is kind of your own making - the same could be said for my dislike of "man" and "woman", true, but I'm not preaching at others for it.

I wish so many cases weren't rounded like that one is. I like meshes, I like black, and I like perfect right angles. As I'll be needing a new case fairly soon if I want to be able to run both of my desktops, does anyone know any other cases similar to the Antec Three Hundred (what I currently have - e: actually, I have the original Three Hundred, which I think looks slightly better, but has less features, but it's close enough) or Corsair Carbide 300R (that I currently am considering to be my best choice) that I should keep my eye on for a decent price? Preferably without any LED fans, but it doesn't matter that much.

I think I've said this here before, but I honestly think it kinda...sucked. Some of the most hamfisted "story"telling I've seen in quite a while, with the game forcing you to do stupid things - things you know that are stupid even before you do them - just so it can try and make you feel guilty for doing those things it made you do. Every time you ever do anything, the stupid three characters whine and complain about what "they" did, and then continue to do the same sort of stuff and then complain some more. Pretty bland shooting mechanics to boot, too. If the forced anti-America/anti-war circlejerk is enough to make you want to play it...well, you're welcome to it, but if you're going to have that sort of thing, it could've and should've been done way better, IMO. I would've preferred some more genuine horrors of war than the silliness it generally showed. P.S. It didn't help that Mass Effect has made me dislike third person shooters in general. P.P.S: The most powerful moment in that game, for me, was not when the characters were doing their..."self-reflecting" bit about some horrible stuff they did, but when we were in the middle of fighting a bunch of generic Arabic guerrilla fighter types, and I was actually playing, when some normal Arabic dude came running down a hallway and I just gunned him down on instinct, and realized even as I was doing it that it was just a regular guy, but couldn't stop it now. Nothing's ever mentioned about it later, and there's no penalty of any sort for doing it. It was what it was, and I think that the realization that you come to completely on your own was a much more powerful thing than any of the other crap the game did.

I never really thought of modern game dialogue like that, but I think you're right. Excessive, slow voice acting combined with poorly executed visuals and not to mention vague replies on your part (if it's an RPG) or just stupid replies (if it's not and the lines are set) tends to make me not care about what's being shown beyond quickly skimming the subtitles. Neutralizing one or two of those negative elements tends to go a long way. Valve games come to mind, where the lip-syncing is actually pretty good, especially for games that almost completely lack normal cutscenes, and where there's not actually all that much talking except for short, occasional sequences, and where you can usually keep actually doing stuff while listening to an NPC talk. It doesn't have bookish quality of some other games, like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - which, again, goes a long way towards making me more interested in even the random filler text that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has - but just those already lift the game's (visible) writing above any competitors.

I generally stick to ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI. ASRock always seemed a little too off brand-y to me, but maybe I should consider them, too. Just purchased my 4770k for close to $110. Whee. Still no motherboard to put it in, though...Oh wondrous pricing gods, deliver a decent Z87/Z97 board sale to me soon!

Path of Exile: my hardcore character died, in the final boss fight. Everything was going swell until it suddenly wasn't and I was dead. I think I lagged for a few moments...that combined with me generally overestimating my character thanks to amazingness of those Vaal superabilities lead to a sudden and swift departure, methinks. Oh well. I almost completed my goal, which was to beat the game on normal, but you can't win all the time.

Using ALT-F4 to avoid deaths is pretty gamey and being gamey to avoid penalties strangely enough warps the game difficulty of the game. You're free to do it of course, I don't mind - I'm simply commenting on the irony of being gamey and complaining about difficulty. Given that the only penalty one can receive is essentially the loss of your character, I think it's wise to use any tools or advantages you can to make sure that doesn't happen. If they didn't want you to be able to do that, they'd probably disable the keys from functioning, anyways. Or, failing that, not immediately logging you out after exiting, (I think a 3-5 second wait would be appropriate). The entire "hardcore" thing is "gamey" - although in an opposite sort of way - so I'm not too concerned about using such tactics if necessary. You may also note that I said I've only done it twice since...properly outfitting, so to speak (and both times were in the mid to late tens, which was a while ago).