Elerond

I don't give a damn about bruised egos. This is the US Supreme Court. This is, bar none, the Single. Most. Important. Thing. that will happen this year. Who wins the election in November is meaningless outside the context of this. Burwell v. Hobby Lobby 5-4 that the government cannot compel a person to violate religious principles DC v. Heller 5-4 that the right to own a firearm is an individual right. And while it can be regulated it can not be eliminated. BSA v. Dale 5-4 that private organizations are allowed to establish their own criteria for membership in their organization. Medellín v. Texas 5-3 +1 The President of the US cannot compel the enforcement of an international treaty that has not been accepted by Congress Dolan v. Tigard 5-4 a property rights case; A municipality cannot force a citizen to pay for things not related to their property as a condition of using their property. Town of Greece v. Galloway 5-4 that it does not violate the 1st amendment if the town of Greece opens it's council sessions with a voluntary prayer. (Marsh v. Chambers 6-3 was the same thing) Oregon v. Mitchell 5-4 The Federal government cannot interfere in State elections All of these the court protected the rights of states or individuals against heavy handed and unconstitutional government action. In every case the "liberals" sided with the government and one more "liberal" would have changed the ruling. Barack Obama will not select a moderate. He despises any check on the power of the State and has publicly mocked the constructionists on the court on more than one occasion. His leading candidate right now seems to be Loretta Lynch who I will remind everyone thinks the 1st Amendment allows the government to prosecute hate speech. What is hate speech you may ask? What ever they say it is. And yet he was also part of Citizens United v FEC, where he helped create the stupid election situation we have now. And I wouldn't argue that Hobby Lobby was defending "individual liberty" given that it was a company who was fighting for the right NOT to have to pay up for standard birth control. As a person, those owners could totally have said "no" but they weren't "a person" when they were acting as the CEO's of their company (and only stopped giving birth control because a squad of christian groups wanted the grounds not to cover it). Just because you can cherry pick your favorite decisions by him, doesn't mean that magically your entire world will come crumbling down when another person who's got a more liberal bent is going to take the bench. And where does this magical sense of "We have to be balanced in favor of conservatism!" come from? Is it just because we've had a conservative court for a long time? Or because the conservative side feels that they're being outpaced by the rapidly changing world around them when they still idealize the Stars and Bars? I can't say about general leanings of judges in SC, but those court decision list above (except one about international treaties) seem to all favor liberalism (individual freedoms). Where conservatism is all about supporting traditional social institutions (of course liberalism and conservatism can drive towards same things when we speak about country that is founded on liberal ideologies). EDIT: Although Hobby Lobby decision is presented bit oddly as it seems to be more about certain companies right to have religious principalities than compelling individuals to break their religious principalities. Which I personally find odd decisions by supreme court as it says fictional entity in certain circumstances can have religious principalities that are more important can laws governing said fictional entities. But what do I know

Microsoft did the same thing with Windows 8 initially. There were a few games that had exclusivity deals with Windows 8 at first. Nothing much became of it and some of the few Win 8 exclusive games eventually wound up getting out of that deal and releasing elsewhere. Microsoft does this every few years where they make a big announcement about how they're getting behind PC gaming again then push one or two games to their latest iteration of Windows as a show of "see we're serious this time" then a couple months down the line they return to the status quo of completely ignoring gaming on PC and concentrating on XBOX. We'll see how this go round pans out. I imagine it will be much the same as every previous go round. The fear of Microsoft trying to ape Apple and lock people into their own version of a walled garden is one of the reasons GabeN and Co. are pushing SteamOS (not particularly quickly or successfully so far, but then, Valve always does things at a snail's pace). As a former Microsoft employee, I guess GabeN is privy to the inner workings of that company, granted that was a long time ago and leadership has changed multiple times since then. Honestly, not too much has seemingly come of Microsoft's supposed push toward a walled garden so far. Only time will tell, I guess. Microsoft also tries to push their Xbox/Universal Apps environment, where PC, Console, Tablet and Phone applications share common code bases and functionalities and user can move freely using same application/game from one device to another (they started this idea with Win 8, but that was hampered by their not so good decision with XAML and how they didn't then support it on all their platforms, etc.) . Quantum Break seem to be one of their show case games that will demo their cross platform technologies, like save game/progression sharing between console and pc version and achievement sharing, cross platform buy feature (when you buy it for console you get it also PC and vice versa and they also show how this is possibly to limit only to preorders) . Quantum Break also will show case DX12. More you look it more you see that MS has decided that Quantum Break will be their demo product for their new technologies so that they can sell them to other companies. So I would guess that tying it to their own store on pc is more byproduct of their other ambitions than their actual desire to compete with Steam, because I don't see Quantum Break as game that one would use if they seriously want to challenge Steam's hegemony, but maybe Remedy is just their only developer with enough PC experience to make the first product and then future they will bring their big guns like Halo series (if so this year E3 should be interesting in terms of MS strategy change).

Dem Nevada: Tie, coin flip win predicted for Clinton Rep Nevada: Trump clear winner South Carolina: Trump and Clinton win with big margin.

Well, US was in the Civil War at the time. Also I'm not sure how something that happened 150 years ago is relevant now. It isn't relevant. Nor was Abraham Lincoln an 'arch-conservative', especially by the standards of the day. Nor was his suspension of Habeas Corpus unconstitutional if you're in the camp that the war he lead on the south was against a rebellion, and not an act of aggression. That said, in modern times, very few politicians at the national level respect and appreciate the U.S. Constitution, and it's likely that almost as few have even read it. Something that most of even the worst politicians at the national level in the 19th century had, and had done. Is it actually possible to graduate from school in USA without getting passing grade from course about constitution? (Not any way relating in topic, but I am just curios)

Twitter user shames male trolls who slam women for posing 'half naked' by sharing their own shirtless images alongside their hateful words Funny side of things, but I though it still fits here better than in The Funny Things thread.

Deadpool is hilarious movie that I recommend to see. Other movies should take note of its opening credits

Firstly I don't blindly trust my government because it all it members are human and they aren't usually brightest minds in my country. Also they are there to represent my interest (and interest of other people in Finland) and if they aren't open and give reasons for their decision I and other people of Finland can't review and determine if their actions were actually in our best interest as they should. And without that knowledge I can't do educated decision in next elections if I continue to give my support for them or do I seek new representatives for my interests. Also blind trust for government opens doors for corruption and other things that people who have power but no supervision do and in democratic societies people are supervisors of their government, all their power should come from will of people. Not blindingly trust in government is even more important when it comes to EU, because EU represent all it member nations and not only Finland so representatives there less likely represent my interest than they do in Finnish government. Also nature of EU's governance allows even more corruption and misuses of power than government of Finland. Although on bright side our representatives in our local governments work as partial supervisors over EU's governance which make it easier to supervise such multinational institution, but existence of EU make it even more important that people in Finland supervise our own government and demand them to do their jobs and supervise over EU's governance and keep us in the loop. Also it is important to keep our representatives in European Parliament responsible of their actions and give reasons for Parliaments actions and supervise European Commission. If people don't question their governments and keep up how their interest are handled by them our democratic systems lose their foundation. It would be like company that don't question actions of their employees. It is not fear that they can sue, it is actual fact that TTIP's current revision would give corporations power sue countries and ECB or Commission or any other institution but that new international trade court, which will be established to handle those suits, will have power to say anything about it if agreement would come in effective in its current form. Whole purpose of that agreement is to create new rules in trade between USA and EU and those new rules will overwrite current ones to make trade easier and more free. Also it is not USA who has ability to sue, but US companies that make invests in EU (this of course also means that EU companies can sue USA, but I write these concerns from Finnish perspective naturally). And as I pointed out those concerns in my previous post were from out Foreign Trade minister, who is the accountable Finnish representative in negotiations about the agreement (so I am not sure that are you saying that I should trust or not trust my government in this matter? Because now your statements are contract each other ). People don't need to necessary know how any specific company will work in Finland, but they need to know when some international agreement will change how they can govern themselves. And also need to have knowledge of new rules so that they can judge how those will effect their everyday lives, companies, etc..

Yes. Do you have a point to make about the lack of transparency on these trade agreements that impact almost everyone on this forums or are you just triggered by Assange? Okay I watched the entire video so I would understand your concern...a couple of considerations There are trade blocks throughout the world that are designed to only benefit its members ...like BRICS There is constant scrutiny of USA companies by the EU ...like the whole tax issue around Google in the UK. So the idea that somehow the USA is going to be able to abuse the EU through this agreement just doesnt make sense ..the EU is well aware of how to grow there economy The idea by that Journalist that " large global corporations " will be able to run rampant in poor countries that will have no rights is really 1970's " Confessions of an Economic Hitman " rhetoric. Nowadays large corporations have to jump through numerous hoops to integrate Finally the average person on the street doesn't need to know the contractual agreement between a multinational and a government ....people need to learn to trust there governments Hopefully this will alleviate your concerns ? Agreement and how it is prepared and negotiated are very questionable and agreement actually has impact on average person on street so they should have ability say about it, at least if we want to continue to call ourself as democratic society. Here is some examples of questionable things in agreement's current form: That it threatens self-determination right of EU member countries, because it includes things like establishing separate trade court in which US companies can sue countries over their changing laws and making court decisions that they feel to hamper their investments (like for example those actions that UK take against Google) . And members of this court consist from arbitrators that companies themselves pick. (Although this at least something that those who negotiate on behalf of EU didn't accept and it is under further negotiations, but their counter proposal of court that consist from judges from EU, USA and third world, this proposal has yet to go in negotiation round). Another things is harmonization of standards, because it can heavily hamper how countries can limit things that are dangerous for health and/or environment. Especially when currently most of harmonization would follow US standards instead of EU's. Free movement of investments and protections for investments. There is already quite big problem because companies move their profits in tax havens inside of EU and free movement of investments from EU to USA would make situation even worse than it is now. Protections for investments lets companies hide their real owners which gives them to slip from their responsibilities and it would make tax evasion even easier for them, which is step to opposite direction than where EU is currently going. And finally people should never trust their governments and always question their actions and ask rationale behind them, because we are democratic societies after all. P.S. Those questionable things are from Finland's foreign trade minister, who is pro EU, pro USA, pro Nato and pro Free Trade liberal conservative. Although she estimated that trade deal will not be struct during Obama administration and they mostly start from beginning if USA's next president is republican.

http://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/feb/13/supreme-court-justice-antonin-scalia-dead-at-79 Will this increase stakes on GOP side?

They haven't acted very likable way in last decade. Like for example censoring and blocking social media platforms and apps. Using violent methods to stop protests Jailing political opposition Instigate violence against their minority population Questionable actions when it comes to ISIS etc. Okay I suppose that makes sense....but if you exclude the last reason all those points apply to countries like Russia and China who seem to very popular on these forums to some members ? I would guess that is because they work as opposition for western politics and criticizes western leadership therefore they score points from those who don't like current western politics and decisions by western leaders for one reason or another. Where Turkey is seen as western puppet that just behaves badly, so they just score those negative points.

They haven't acted very likable way in last decade. Like for example censoring and blocking social media platforms and apps. Using violent methods to stop protests Jailing political opposition Instigate violence against their minority population Questionable actions when it comes to ISIS etc.

Nothing wrong with getting methanol from wood byproducts, theoretically it's a very good idea much as getting methane from rubbish dumps is as well. It's probably a lot more sensible than the US getting ethanol from corn and certainly more than us getting methanol from natural gas which are both previous/ ongoing projects elsewhere. Something like the Brazilian ethanol project have been very successful though. There is nothing wrong in idea itself, we already have bio fuel refineries that do so in here in Finland (and in Brazil and other countries where our companies produce their fuels). Neste Oil (Finnish mostly government owned energy company) is for example one of the biggest biofuel producers who produces biofuel from wood. Difference is that they use much cheaper and faster renewable eucalyptus trees instead of slowly growing trees (spruces and pines) that we have here in Finland. Also they use cheaper methods to do their biofuel than what those Chinese plan to do (but that isn't that important detail). And we know that they can't produce biofuel that is competitive without governmental help and regulations demanding that certain amount of fuel need to be biofuel, even though Neste's biodiesel is actually reviewed to be better than diesel produced from oil.

Such refinery don't not exist in 20 years of now with out massive additional investment to new refinery technologies. Not mention that running such refinery for ten years cost about 20 billion euros. So building it know in hopes of getting something from it in 20 years in future don't necessary hit me like good plan. But maybe they just build it for 15 years like those French have done with their nuclear plant project, who knows.

But China could give Russia billions if they wanted to even with the credit rating companies like Moodys scoring the Russians credit rating junk....the Chinese are a strange nation..I am often confused by what motivates them? China has capacity to do so, but for reason that I can only guess they haven't done so at least yet. China has their own vision of future, which isn't that easy to always understand. Like for example they are currently seeking to build billion euros bio fuel refinery in northern Finland, even though oil prices are down and there is no market prediction that would indicate that fuel produced from logging waste and possible pulpwood (which causes additional expenses) would be profitable. So guesses are that they think there will be governmental support in some form (direct compensation, like in wind energy or possible regulations tat gasoline needs to have certain amount biofuel mixed in it which is already the case but than it future that percentage will rise or something). So I can't help to enlighten you in what motivates Chinese government, but I am quite sure that self interest plays big part, but what Chinese see to advance their self interest and what those interest actually are I can't say.

Sanctions also make it difficult for Russia to get loans from market with decent interest rates and they don't help other actions that could help in economical recovery. Oil price is something that Russia probably tries to influence by causing problems for OPEC countries.

Russia has a cheek, maybe they should worry about trying to get there economy out of recession instead of criticizing Merkel Criticizing leadership of those countries that have given Russia economical sanctions is actually one the ways Medvedev tries to to get Russia out of the regression. As if they get people question their leaders in immigration issues they can use that to make them to question sanctions against Russia.

Does Clinton's campaign purposefully try prevent her candidacy? Or maybe I just don't understand US politics at all. EDIT: If that email is real, it shows that Clinton's campaign wants to have more small donors behind her campaign, so that they can deflect claims about Clinton representing Wall Street. But way they go is pretty brash and therefore more likely to cause more harm than good, but as I said maybe I just don't understand US politics at all.

Is Consortium bad game or did it developer screw up something or is there some other reason why it sequel don't interest people? Anybody know or have educated guesses?

http://www.zdnet.com/article/when-it-comes-to-windows-10-privacy-dont-trust-amateur-analysts/ "First of all, 602 connection attempts were to 192.168.1.255, using UDP port 137. That's the broadcast address where Windows computers on a local network announce their presence and look for other network computers using the NetBIOS Name Service. It's perfectly normal traffic. Another 630 of those connection attempts were Domain Name System lookups to the router itself, 192.168.1.1, using UDP port 53. That address is the router itself. Why is Windows performing those DNS lookups? One big reason is that's how Windows checks whether you have access to the Internet. If there's a problem with your Internet connection, you get a yellow overlay on the network icon down at the right side of the taskbar. To do that test, Windows first performs a DNS lookup of www.msftncsi.com. It then makes an HTTP request to retrieve the page ncsi.txt from that site. This file is a plain-text file and contains only the text "Microsoft NCSI." (NCSI stands for Network Connection Status Icon.) Finally, it performs a DNS query for dns.msftncsi.com. The whole procedure is extensively documented . DNS queries aren't "spying." Neither are NetBIOS name broadcasts on your local network. So far, that's 22.3 percent of the so-called traffic that's easily accounted for as "not spying," unless you think there's something sinister about a two-word text file that has been downloaded trillions of times from that poor Microsoft server. Next up is a staggering 1,619 connection attempts using UDP port 3544 to the address 94.245.121.253, which Mr. Crust was unable to identify, along with another five attempts using the same port to other servers. That address does indeed belong to Microsoft. It's a Teredo server, teredo.ipv6.microsoft.com. Teredo is an Internet standard that is used to supply an IPv6 address to a PC that speaks only IPv4, making it easier to perform secure and reliable communication between two endpoints without having to worry about network translation. It's also well documented and doesn't involve any exchange of information other than IP addresses. In short, Windows keeps trying to make a simple connection using its IPv6 capabilities, but the router keeps dropping those connection attempts. So it keeps trying again and again. That's another 1,624 entries we can add to the "not spying" list. So far, by my tally, more than 52 percent of the connection attempts are completely harmless and involve no data collection at all. Another three connection attempts are using port 123. That's the Network Time Protocol, which devices use to retrieve the current time from authoritative servers on the Internet. Setting the clock on your computer is not "spying." Mr. Crust's list has another 549 connection attempts on port 80, which is plain old HTTP. Windows doesn't have a web server installed by default, so those are all incoming connections, with Windows trying to retrieve data from Microsoft's servers. They're not sending it the other direction. Many of the addresses on the list belong to content delivery networks (CDNs) like Akamai Technologies and CloudFlare. Some of those downloads are possibly trying to refresh live tiles in the provisioned MSN apps (News, Sports, Weather, Money, and so on). There are perhaps some updates to the Windows Store in there too. We might know more if Mr. Crust had allowed his machine to complete some of those connections so he could perform some actual traffic analysis. But he didn't, so we can't. We can, however, safely conclude that none of those connections would involve any "spying." Which leaves us with 2,100 connection attempts in eight hours over port 443. Those are secure (HTTPS) connections designed to exchange data so that it can't be intercepted in transit. We have no idea how many secure connections that machine would have made in eight hours had Mr. Crust actually allowed them to complete. The number would almost certainly have been smaller, perhaps by an order of magnitude or even two. And of course, those connections are not all about telemetry. The most important one is the Software Licensing Service, which checks the state of Windows activation periodically. By dropping those connections, Mr. Crust is not allowing those activation and validation checks to complete. Windows gets very cranky when that happens, which could explain why there were more than 1,700 connection attempts to a handful of addresses in a single range of IP addresses managed by Microsoft. Other content that gets delivered securely over port 443 includes Windows updates, Windows Defender updates, and updates from the Windows Store for apps that are provisioned on every Windows 10 machine. Windows 10 attempts to contact OneDrive, also securely, to see if there are any saved settings for the current user. There are lists of known malicious websites that get delivered to the SmartScreen service in a hashed and encrypted format. And yes, there is certainly some telemetry data in there. We have no idea whether Mr. Crust changed the default Diagnostic and Usage settings to Basic. If he had, there would probably be a single ping to Microsoft's servers when the machine starts up, which would disclose what that setting was, whether Windows Defender was up to date, and whether his installation had experienced any failures in software or driver installation. If he had kept the Enhanced or Full settings, Windows would periodically deliver a batch of anonymized usage data to Microsoft. (Of course, since he wasn't actually using the machine, there would be no data to exchange.) But we don't know, because Mr. Crust didn't actually do any traffic analysis." Windows 10 sends questionable information to MS, which is mainly used to create marketing profile for user, but Forbes' article is just plainly wrongly and write somebody that don't seem to know what they are talking about, and in my opinion it does more damage than good as it is so easy to show that it is just hogwash.

Thanks Elerond, How would I go about updating my C++ libraries? I haven't tried that yet. I do have about 7% cpu being used by system interrupts I haven't been able to figure out yet, but PoE on it's own never uses more than 30% of the processor. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2977003 There you can download latest versions.

Game runs better on computers that have weaker performance on paper than yours, so my guess is that your problems are probably on software side of things like for example you don't have some software components (like for example your visual C++ libraries may not be newest versions or they have some problems [some people have had them causing problems with PoE]) that are needed or possibly you have some background program on your computer that causes problems.

Seeing as it's directx 12 only I think it's obvious why it's being pushed on PC. It was originally using Xbox One's DX11. Change to DX12 and releasing it to PC has happened in past 6 months.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/us-house-tees-controversial-bill-nsf-research Researchers need to explain benefits of new scientific discoveries, before they get funds for research to find them. Seems reasonable .

https://twitter.com/Xbox/status/697785062889115648 Quantum Break comes to Windows 10 same day as it comes out to Xbox One. MS actually puts money on PC game development? Has world gone mad?

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/10/tamir-rice-shooting-cleveland-police-emergency-medical-expenses "The city of Cleveland wants the family of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy killed by police, to pay hundreds of dollars to the government to cover “emergency medical services” for the child’s “last dying expense”, according to records. The city’s attorneys filed a claim on Wednesday against Rice’s estate alleging that the family owes $500 for an unpaid EMS bill from the boy’s death, sparking outrage from Ohio supporters of the family who described it as a particularly cruel legal maneuver. “The callousness, insensitivity, and poor judgment required for the city to send a bill after its own police officers killed a 12-year-old child is breathtaking,” Subodh Chandra, the family’s attorney, said in an email. “This adds insult to homicide.” Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann fatally shot Rice, who was black, on 22 November 2014 – within two seconds of arriving at a local park, in response to a 911 caller who warned of a juvenile carrying a weapon that was “probably fake”. Loehmann later testified that he thought Rice, who had a toy gun on him, was 18 years old. News of the $500 claim comes two months after a grand jury declined to indict Loehmann, which means the officer will not face criminal charges. According to documents sent to the estate with the claim, the $500 covers $450 for ambulance services and $10 for “mileage”. Loehmann and another officer did not check Rice’s vital signs or perform first aid in the minutes after he was shot, but did physically restrain the boy’s sister when she attempted to reach him. The request for money from the family comes from a city that earned widespread scorn after it claimed in a defense document last year that the 12-year-old’s own actions “directly and proximately” caused his death."