IndiraLightfoot

@teknoman: Perhaps. Then, oddly enough, it would then be the GPU-related stuff of the Catalyst software that tempered my problems under the new Crimson suite or something. I'm not that tech savvy, but perhaps it was just a stroke of luck. At least I know, it's heat related, since Windows said at restart that something may have shut down to protect bla bla bla (standard grey font message - I never got a definitive message telling me what's wrong). I suspect it's some 95 degrees heat protection trigger that black screened it all. It was never a blue screen. I checked all my wires and connections, outside the casing (which was clean, no dust) and inside, for mother board and power unit. I even ran a chkdsk, and I also ran a hardware diagnostic of my monitor. Btw, everything else was standard, standard, standard. Win 7 64-bit, I never overclock or something like that. I have no special software for graphics that I've added. AMD + Windows.

Hmm, interesting. I mean, all I know is this: After installing that AMD crimson software suite (I didn't install any other software and no patching or updates of any kind occurred), it merely took a few hours, and during that time, the following happened from a lay person's point of view: -Normally, since I use an SSD, my computer is dead silent, except when running some really demanding games, then the fan hum pretty low. -Well, as soon as I installed it, the fan actually started to make a fair bit of noise, even when at more or less idle work. -After a couple of hours, when playing a simple card game on my pc, the fan sped up noisily, and then BLIP! Black screen. PC restarted itself. -Well, it was late in the evening, so I went to bed. -Next day, the fan sounds at idle were still weirdly noisy, and then it took merely a few minutes, using Photoshop. BLIP! Black screen. PC running, fan was crazy. I had to reboot it manually. -Then, I installed AMD Monitor, so I could follow everything, and basically, all my quad cores were getting agitated, as well as the temperature and obviously the fan. Like I described, then it was just a matter of half an hour or an hour of whatever idle surfing I did. BLIP! Black screen plus fan rushing! Then that crash kept repeating itself. After my un-installation of Crimson and re-install of Catalyst, and like a day, like 16 h of use of my pc, I have monitored the following: -Not a single crash *knock on wood* -Everything is silent. -No fan rushing, nearly no fan sounds at all (like before) -No hot graphics card, no fan rushing, even after 3 h of Overwatch! -The four quads and the % use of CPU etc, back to minimal levels, like 8 % vis-a-vis 35-40% for one app, for instance. The difference is stark.

@teknoman2: You were lucky then. Lots of people didn't fare that well. AMD tried to fix the problems, and some customers even discussed taking legal action after their hardware suffered from that Crimson software. I have the R9 280x, sadly. Here are a few links on these issues: http://www.pcgamesn.com/latest-amd-graphics-drivers-can-lock-fan-speeds-overheating-cards-to-break-point http://www.myce.com/news/new-amd-crimson-drivers-damage-videocards-due-to-overheating-77928/ http://www.pcworld.com/article/3009688/components/amd-pushing-crimson-driver-fan-speed-hotfix-after-reports-of-overheating-radeon-cards.html

I couldn't agree more. And yeah, there are games that I did love to play, like Skyrim, D3 and in my case DA:I even, and I've played for hundreds of hours, but they never pulled me in, and that sense of magic was only flickering here and there. In short, they're great time killers. You know a game is good when the hours just fly by, when it becomes too important for you, and your priorities are no longer in order, and back in April 2015, PoE did that for me. Also Dishonored was like that for me. I have my own business, and when I played it, I literally lost fair chunks of doe simply because I forgot about that adult stuff we're supposed to do.

Hi'all! Well, this is just a word of warning, basically. Over half a year ago, Melkathi wrote a short notice on Steam about the new AMD Radeon Crimson messing things up. So, having Radeon Catalyst, I heeded that advice, and put up updating that graphics cards software. However, a few days ago, in a weak moment, I reckoned it would be safe by now to let it rip, as it were ( ). Well, it wasn't. It turned out to be a disaster. My fan was acting up all of the sudden, and I got instant black screen shut downs. I opened the casing, and felt some pretty bad heat coming from my graphics card. I started googling (with two more shutdowns), and learned that this Crimson software bloody well destroys your rig. Gulp! It took me quite some time, but I learned from a clever Russian that I could lower the CPU percentage a bit, if plugged in, while searching, just to lower the heat. This bought me time to completely uninstall everything AMD (my screen graphics looked like it did in 1996), find the latest old Catalyst software suite from November 2015, and then download it and reinstall it. Lo' and behold! It worked. My computer is not hot at all anymore according to my monitor program, and it's once again running silently. Phew!

Leferd: That's the best match of the few I've seen. I'm not much of boxing fan, but Mohammad Ali made it all look like art. MA was a fighter in so many other senses than boxing, though. He was brave and brash, and stood up for what he believed in - something which inspired millions of people all over the world. P.S. This may come across as corny, but I loved his way of rhyming. It was like rap way before I knew what rap was. Cool stuff!

Pittsburgh vs Sharks!!? What's happening? Great finals, mark my word!

Yeah. It's hardly as simple as opportunity makes a thief. There's certainly something awful brewing in those minds already, and sometimes they've already acted out that vile stuff on a few occasions. The means facilitate those urges and impulses, and may turn a small ugly minnow into a big bad shark, but they most certainly didn't create them. At worst, something hideous and dormant awoke. Like Malcador said, this was more a judgmental statement of mine.

Power is rather a set of interrelational opportunities that may constitute or even manipulate institutions to have a person or more governing others in various ways. This is basically the point of Foucault when he got older. Actions of power assume and thrive in a context of freedom; in essence, you have the means and the institutions to act in a certain way. Any weaker parties in these power relations - the young, the infirm or the easily led-on - respond to this "dance of power", but only to a degree. They can even offer up resistance and counter-narratives, or undermine the entire process. However, when the thumb-screws are twisted too hard, all such wiggling room is gone. Freedom elopes from such power relations, at least eludes them, and you are left with bare-bone slavery, assault or any sort of runaway madness. So, at the very heart of the power relationship, and constantly provoking it, are the recalcitrance of the will and the intransigence of freedom. Else, it's just abuse of the worst kind.

Bill Cosby may very well be as despicable a person as Jimmy Savile. Once again, power corrupts in the most peculiar of evil twists.

Meanwhile, at Blizzard, employees get to walk away with unique swords after a few years of loyal service. It's a cruel, cruel world for game devs and translators - so uncertain, unfortunately. Hopefully, they weren't led on. I mean, years of work for nothing is harsh in itself, but when there's no pay at all at the end, it stings even worse.

For the time being, I'm trying to keep up with all the ambidextrous teens with lightning-fast reflexes, playing Overwatch. Well, it turns out that there's still need for wisdom and healing in hectic combat. This was from my first try as Mercy. Ever since, it's my favourite hero!

I'll definitely give it a go in one digital way or another, since I haven't played WoW much at all (I tried it for free, once, and it seemed to be quite decent for being a MMORPG, but out-dated), so I'll view it like some freshening up on my Azeroth lore and all that. It will be fun in more ways than one, I suspect.

Problem is: Most vampires of today are more telenovela than Nosferatu, and I'm only interested in the latter. Vampyr, please, not Harlequin vampire.

Sponge Bob wouldn't make a very nice president, that's for sure. We all know that the best choice is that unifying Real McCoy guy:

That's definitely not true. I have been strolling around a number of times with my youngest cousin with a baby trolley at night in one of the worst neighbourhoods, reported as one of those "no-go zones" by extreme right-wing press, and it's all pretty neat, tidy and serene. The only potential threat, just like when I grew up, are teenage gangs of frustrated young males. These are the ones throwing stones etc. at rescue workers on occasion, after having set one or two cars on fire as some twisted idea of fun for your Friday night. I felt much more threatened when I was visiting poor French suburbs, for instance, recently. And, once again, these are not the immigrants from the refugee "crisis". These are the teen kids of poor parents of various background who almost all have been born (the parents, that is) in Sweden or at least lived there since they were in kindergarten. And many suburbs have been multinational since the late 70s. At school, when I was 13-15 years of age, we proudly put up all of the flags from the background of all the students in all the hallways. Something like 450 pupils had 78 different nationality backgrounds back then. Nothing new here, folks. The only new thing is the extreme right alarmist twist of it all, sadly. That's the thing isn't it? It's the next generation of immigrants who are conducting the violence, so why continue bringing in more and thus creating more friction in the long run? Also, i find interesting how little it matters to you for them doing what they do. This is from the perspective of the other side of the pond though, that kind of behaviour is simply not tolerated here. Just to understand your position more correctly, a few questions: 1) What is a Swede? Anyone with a swedish passport? 2) Do you consider Ramadan a typical swedish holiday? 3) Is this propaganda? http://denkorteavis.dk/2016/din-forbannede-luder/ 4) What's your opinion on the rise of the Swedish Democrats? Why are they gaining ground? 5) Do you consider Swedish society going in the positive direction? The first thing you say is in a way correct, but! And this is a big but: It's the second generation of all the residents in those poor problem-ridden suburbs that produce a lot of restless youth and part-time thugs and even full-time criminals. The fact that they are immigrants has very little do to with it. I can only speak for myself, and my very rough areas I grew up in, but the Swedes and the Finns of old Nordic lineage were overall worse than those of Assyrian decent or Greek, Kurdish, Egyptian or Italian, just to name a few fairly common backgrounds where I lived then. The latter didn't take up bad alcohol or drug habits, and they took school more seriously. Over to your questions: 1) A typical Swede is one who's ashamed of being a Swede or one who doesn't have any sense of national pride whatsoever. I know it's sounds weird, but we were brought up this way. So, yes, it's little more than a Swedish citizen with a passport. 2) Here's the extremely weird thing. Swedish holidays are all the same: X-mas (jul), Easter (påsk) and Midsummer's Eve (Midsommarafton) all have the same food (with courses and strong drinks (snaps) hearkening back to when Sweden was the poorest country in the whole of Europe, so foreigners usually find them horrible.) Sweden got a National Day as a holiday extremely late, year 2005. Well, we also have Lucia (an Italian Saint that turned into a tradition in the 1800s) as well as May the 1st (Första maj), the workers' big holiday. However, no. Ramadan isn't a Swedish holiday, but for many new Swedes, it still is, but it's not an acknowledged national holiday. And, heh, did you know that the pinnacle of Swedish X-Mas is watching one hour of a potpourri of American Walt Disney classics? 3) It's more or less Danish right-wing propaganda, and it's of course applauded by Swedish Democrats and their propaganda site: Avpixlat. Expo has had researchers investigate the networks of these organisations and they are almost all over Europe and all semi-fascistoid, anti-Semitic and anti-Islam and of course racist. 4) They appeal to people's fear of the foreign and the unknown and to people's need for scapegoats. They have used the Internet for years very systemically and with great success. Most of their voters were originally young and middle-aged men in those problematic suburbs we spoke of earlier, as well as men of that age in the countryside. Later, they gained ground among elderly men as well, and of course quite a few women jumped on the bandwagon too. I mean, at their largest, I reckon they had polls passing 20%. 5) No, but not for the reason you'd think. I want a society where income disparity is as low as possible, and those having trouble coping should have decent safety nets. But the past 10 years, or rather, 20 years, that kind of social-democratic Sweden gave way to a neoliberal democratic society, much more akin to Thatcherism than, say, Olof Palme's socialism light with a strong international solidarity.

This incident is prolly old news to many of you military buffs here, but I'd thought I'd share it anyway, since it's one of the most amazing strokes of luck in a lethal situation I've ever seen:

That's definitely not true. I have been strolling around a number of times with my youngest cousin with a baby trolley at night in one of the worst neighbourhoods, reported as one of those "no-go zones" by extreme right-wing press, and it's all pretty neat, tidy and serene. The only potential threat, just like when I grew up, are teenage gangs of frustrated young males. These are the ones throwing stones etc. at rescue workers on occasion, after having set one or two cars on fire as some twisted idea of fun for your Friday night. I felt much more threatened when I was visiting poor French suburbs, for instance, recently. And, once again, these are not the immigrants from the refugee "crisis". These are the teen kids of poor parents of various background who almost all have been born (the parents, that is) in Sweden or at least lived there since they were in kindergarten. And many suburbs have been multinational since the late 70s. At school, when I was 13-15 years of age, we proudly put up all of the flags from the background of all the students in all the hallways. Something like 450 pupils had 78 different nationality backgrounds back then. Nothing new here, folks. The only new thing is the extreme right alarmist twist of it all, sadly.

Couldn't that be because any time we set it at a static value it will eventually lose purchasing power? So it helps for maybe a couple of years and then we're back to where we were? unfortunately, history is clear opposed to such a belief. the majority o' folks living at poverty levels is unemployed-- over 60%. so you just raised their cost o' living w/o any corresponding increase in income. also, and this is another guarantee, teen jobs decrease dramatically when min wage is increased. 600,000 teen jobs were lost in the 6 months following the 2009 fed min wage increase. so, low income families who is most likely to genuine need teens making extra income is gonna lose out, and lose in a big way. and again, min wage doesn't create money. the business owner who needs must pay more for labor must find a way to cut cost or pass along such costs to customers. raise minimum wage necessitates a corresponding cost of living increase just as does increase in basic utility costs or food prices. the folks making the least amount o' income is always the folks hurt most by such increases. the poor is the folks who has the least disposable income, so raise costs o' basic needs disproportionately affects the poor. minimum wage increases actual hurt the poor, particularly the mostest poor. am understanding that the economics is counterintuitive. if bob is getting paid $15 instead o' $10, he has more money to spend on pay day, yes? seems so obvious that bob is benefitting. unfortunately, bob, as representative o' poverty and low-income earners, is actual losing Every time we see a minimum wage increase. also, keep in mind that Gromnir is the guy always complaining that the single biggest problem facing America is income disparity. the reason why we advocated bernie sanders for President is not necessarily 'cause we thinks he would be the most effective executive, but we believe that bernie gots the correct priorities. we don't always agree with sanders' conclusions, but the President's most important role is actual setting the national agenda. if the impossible were to happen and sanders were elected, then Congress and the media would also be talking 'bout income disparity. nevertheless, in spite o' our seeming obsession 'bout income disparity, we absolute hate mandated min wage increases. seeing as how we is opposed to policies that hurt the poorest segments o' an already polarized society, our aversion to min wage is predictable. HA! Good Fun! ps many small business owners, 'ccording to department of labor, is actual in favor of small and gradual increases in min wage. 'course were only 3 of 5 in favor and from a limited study. even so, incremental, small and predictable increases make far more sense to us. keep up with cost o' living ? is reasonable arguments in favor o' such. unfortunate, that ain't actual how min wage gets increased. I'm not that well versed in the living conditions and socio-economic situations for various classes in the US, but this write-up certainly enlightened me quite a bit. From what I've been following about the presidential candidates over there, I'd pick Bernie Sanders as well, for the reasons Gromnir put forth here.

Bartimaeus: I can see why some wouldn't like his high-pitch whiney instrument-like voice. No worries, mate! Music certainly strikes chords differently for different people. That's cool. This early hit of theirs is still a classic - I'd say it's eerily suggestive with lyrics to which lots of peeps can relate.

Well, Radiohead's latest is out, A Moon Shaped Pool, and it's pretty darn great. I'm truly over the moon, since I'm a big fan of theirs and Thom Yorke's unique voice. Here's one of the new tracks. Enjoy!

I love everything Carl Barks, and I have sporadically collected old Donald Duck-comics, 1940-1965. His work is just superb, so I have some pretty expensive gems in mint condition. I usually go for very few, but high-quality ones. A few of them I haven't even peeked in, let alone read. Absurd, huh?

Yay!! This is great news. Now, I just hope, there will be more build options, more classes, spells and variation in combat. Yup! I'm that greedy.

Hi y'all! After that lovely Texan greeting, I'd be happy to shed some light on the refugee situation in Sweden, although brief. First off - those cases, where cars have been set on fire and rescue teams got attacked. They occur in suburbs with high unemployment rates, and most people there, although some have quite some decent education, still won't find work. These suburbs also have a high percentage of immigrant families. I partly lived in a few of these suburbs myself as a kid. And the conditions then were better as far as social services and general care went. However, back then, they were still pretty bad places to be in, with all sorts of criminal activity, and plenty of jaded people with physical, psychological and/or drug problems. Sadly, at the turn of the century, things took a turn for the worst there, and segregation has deepened considerably. However, very few immigrants of these recent wave to Sweden, which was record-breaking - we're speaking 100,000+ peeps in a few months - has yet to try to make a living there. Instead, they live in housing provided by often cynical property owners (we're speaking ramshackle houses, infested with bed bugs and ****roaches) getting huge government money for each refugee housed. And people of different religions and from different conflicts are mixed and crammed into tight spaces - sometimes Assad-supporter refugees get to live next door with those that have fled his bombs. That's a recipe for disaster. A few voluntary workers and refugees have already been killed at such facilities. Another problem is when some of these desperate individuals are informed that they won't be allowed to stay in Sweden. The worst case last year, was one man so distraught over this message that he went into the nearest IKEA and randomly stabbed a few people. One died, IIRC. My father's family were all war refugees, and everything they experienced weigh heavily on them and exact tolls in the form of mental problems and health issues. There is a huge shortage of psychologists for those tens of thousands of youngsters and men with PTSD. Having said this much so far, you can tell this won't be a bed of roses for Sweden. For years and decades to come, this will bring high costs and big problems. Still, I'd refrain from using the word "crisis". War is crisis. These people did what we all would try to do if we were in the midst of battle din: flee for our lives. Also, these conflicts have been going on for years and don't seem to end any time soon, so their future is looking grim. Usually, it’s a young man or a father who’ve risked everything to get into Europe, and then he hopes to get the rest of his family over to his new country later. In itself, very risky, but understandable. Overall, Sweden has mustered huge resources. The refugees get to learn Swedish (SFI-education) and most of us are generally positive and try to help as best we can. Perhaps 20%, though, are clearly negative of this development, and something like 1% are outright hostile. Almost a hundred refugee housing complexes have been subjected to arsony last year alone. In the long run, however. It will be a huge boost for Sweden. Over the last 30 years already, Sweden’s population has increased by, IDK, 25%, all immigrants! It’s like one of the last countries that had an open door policy of migration, a bit like Australia and USA, way back when. Still, this open door was shut in their faces just before X-mas, when the government here did a 180 and became one of the most closed nations, with border check points and strict control, the reason given: the situation has gotten out of hand. In part, it was true. There was no more housing available, no more teachers and psychologist, etc. Nor was the number of police officers enough. Not far from where I live, a small town got a refugee facility with Afghanian refugees, almost all boys that had fled the Taliban, which then made up 25 % of the residents of that town.