fuchikoma

Dex, when I was taking my computing diploma course (less CS, more trades/job skills) we had a HUGE attrition rate, but I think the thing that really matters is that you want to be there and find the stuff interesting. Most of the guys who were just in it because they thought there'd be an employment boom would burn out and drop out. The ones who really loved it like myself often found it tough... but interesting and quite doable.

Well, I can't say for certain as I wasn't there, but memories are actually very unreliable, especially if influenced by suggestion. Unless you and your brother didn't corroborate the sighting, and were separated, each testifying independently, it's possible that either one saw a photo of her somewhere and described it to the other, and somewhere along the lines it became a memory of both having seen her there? At least that would be the debunker's argument, I think. I'm seeing more and more backing in neuroscience and psychology for the advice to live in the present or "the now," given how scarily inaccurate humans are in dealing with thoughts of the past and future. (Also, as a kid I was way more prone than I am now to pareidolia. I'd pick up faces in woodgrain, voices in noise, etc, but with age/experience, it happened less and less.)

This is exactly as invalid as the arguments that hateful Christians aren't "real Christians", or any similar idea. "No true scotsman." You're right - I chose the wrong word there. It's not that they're not atheists, it's that they're not just atheists and are not representative of atheists. I think they're as bad for atheism's image as religious extremists of other stripes are to the mainstream of their respective religions. It just annoys me, being one who doesn't believe in higher powers or supernatural phenomena, to be lumped in with what are essentially hate groups because of their high visibility and prominent declarations that they are "atheists." I think "anti-theist" is a far more apt title for the oppositional variety since they are speaking for everyone who identifies as an atheist, even if their militant outlook is in stark opposition to a huge number (I'm thinking a majority) of them.

I wouldn't normally post domestic game purchases here since that could get noisy fast (and I'm lazy ) but I just made a big order of game-related soundtracks I posted over in the music thread. Probably gonna order Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F and DJ Max Portable 3 very soon. [edit: Permalink didn't work]

Just ordered a whole buncha Touhou Project arrange discs through a Japanese buying service called Goody-Japan. For those who don't know this phenomenon, all but the last one are "doujin" groups, which is basically "indie," but these ones all focus mainly on doing versions of music from the Touhou Project PC game series. There are many, many more than this as well - since the original creator allows any derivative works that don't get too commercial, it's led to an unprecedented cultural explosion around this series. Despite a global cult following, these small groups don't often sell their works in big stores that would ship internationally, but there are a number of services in Japan to facilitate Japanese shopping and online auctions for the international community. Alstroemeria Records/Syrufit - Double Counterpoint (softsubbed) SYNC.ART'S - Tenga (cover. Originals don't last long on Youtube)

IMO the ones who go out and troll Christians (or other religions) and make a point of starting fights with them are not atheists; they are antitheists. It's not that religion is nothing to them - it almost seems it's everything - but instead of loving it, they hate it. That said, I went through such a phase for a while, because one of the few things that will genuinely anger me is proselytization. Those who do it may mean well, but when you deconstruct it, it's telling someone else that they are living their lives the wrong way, particularly regarding some of their most personal beliefs, and that the one doing the preaching (often a stranger) knows better than themselves what is good for them. Put that way, it's deeply, personally insulting and probably explains some of the severe reactions we see to it.

"Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out." - Sydney Smith, English essayist (1771 - 1845) I'm afraid this applies to both sides, which is really as bad as it gets... No reason, just outrage.

Ah, what the heck... ⑨/⑨ only comes once or twice a year!

I can see the argument that if an experience is altered - say 10 guys run out and mob you, but on easy it's a "mob" of 3 - that it's not the same experience, and as a director that could be troubling if you were going for a certain kind of scene. But if players are stonewalled and unable to effectively engage the game, then they simply don't get to have most of the experience in the first place. So I guess for a given game, it comes down to which is more important - the purity of the game, at the cost of a narrower appeal, or the ability to be experienced by more people, sometimes at the cost of some of the game's creative impact or the designer's ideal vision of it.

I'm thinking it must be quantum entanglement (simple ver).

Same up north here. A brewery is like a liquor factory (unless maybe it's a microbrewery... well, even often then these days.) Bars and pubs both serve beer and spirits, but pubs are more laid back and might serve decent food. A bar will probably be noisy and have TV screens and will be less to hang out and more to drink. Also FDS, you nailed the naming thing - we had a Blarney Stone in my hometown too... But, take these as generalizations too, as I tend to keep out of either one when I can...

Yeah, I admit I cracked both of mine, and it's a bit of a toss-up... The DS was pretty much load n' play with an R4, but once in a while it required an update, which was about as hard as loading the games onto a card... but it did require buying the card from someone who was dealing them and hadn't been shut down yet. The PSP, there have been various methods of enabling CFW over the years, but they tend to vary greatly and often take an evening of studying to get a new method figured out... but they're doable by anyone with an Internet connection, a PC, and the guts to risk bricking their system. I do believe piracy probably severely took away from PSP game sales. Could it have also promoted some games, gaining additional sales? Sure, I suppose, but I don't see that outpacing piracy losses for the vast majority. Statistics? Sure... show me how to monitor every action by millions of people who are trying not to get caught, when basically I'd have to prove each one of them visited the applicable webpages and then followed the instructions to crack their systems, then downloaded games from any of the N sources of each one... it's impossible (for us non-spooks anyway...) Even then, after that, I'd have to show their hypothetical intent to buy. That said, I think with the ease and prevalence of piracy on the PSP, it'd be pretty delusional to say it probably didn't make a significant difference.

In Canada, I'd say... there's no more convention for naming pubs than any other business... When I was a kid, there was a local pub named after an explorer, but most of them have much more generic names after some catchy iconography or the owner's nickname.

It's surely a DVD - I think it comes to >2GB... but cut him some slack. They look identical and it's practically the same thing these days since no one has a CD-only drive...

It could get bad... I'd imagine you'd want to update your Windows components at some point, to avoid the many security holes that crop up.

Ugggg... I used to do that with Win98. Sucks even when you have the first OS base install disc since it takes forever... Well, if you really have a week and a half ahead of you... I'm still not really sold on desktop Linux, but... if you get lucky it'll like your PC and get the job done for a while anyway. It should last a couple weeks at least.

Won't the installer let you format and/or partition the disk again? If you can get to the recovery console from your install disk, you could use DISKPART, but that's a bit technical. I typed this part first, and it'll work if you're not that tech savvy, but it's less than ideal... You could grab a tool like Partition Wizard and blow away all the partitions on your disk. It should be quick, and while it doesn't overwrite everything, nothing will know there was anything on there to begin with unless you specifically go looking for it. Just make absolutely certain that if you have multiple disks, you get the right one. [edit: "a" never works before "the"...]

I've never had it pass a bad stick for me, but I've seen several Memtest failures... I dealt with a lot of Dells at work and it seems if they're going to fail, it's usually bad, cheap RAM - Hyundai or Hynix (same thing as I understand...) Actually it even happened with my mom's Dell that had been working for about a year. One stick just went bad after a while. It was under warranty though, so they shipped a replacement in no time. They're really good about quick and easy replacement of bad parts.

You can get Memtest86+ for free and boot it off a CD or flashdrive. If it fails, it's not definitely your RAM - CPU problems can manifest the same way. If you think it may be SSD issues, it's worth checking to see if there's a firmware update, and if you have the option, back up before applying it. I did hear a lot of early SSDs with JMicron(?) controllers had issues. FWIW I've had some great luck with Intel's X25 series - they're quite trouble-free, and if you're on Win7 or newer, maintenance-free (TRIM command). Other than that, if it might be a GPU issue, you can try running benchmarks and burn-in tests to try to trip it up. I really recommend getting a good overall temperature monitor like SpeedFan if it's a homemade PC though, just so you don't cook anything.

Cool robot. I wonder if they've ever seen the video for ('course, those limbs are as human as they look...) Very cool clip on animation... like they were saying, some of the more abstract stuff doesn't necessarily need a clear narrative or characters to move somebody. I think some of the visual language they convey could be something more akin to music - characters and theme could be like the lyrics - meaningful, or less so, or simply not included in the first place. Let's see what this says to people...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pemVkM59f8 I'm not much of a foot-tapper, but breakcore and other chaotic-sounding stuff seems to bring it out in me...

I'd have thought "thorn" too, but I see they covered that at the end. Then, rather than being removed from the alphabet, there's the plucky typewriter symbol that vies for a place among punctuation marks but only seems visible to geeks, the interrobang.