FaustianQ

A picture of my rig and uh, "new" desk.
 

 
I said fuck it on the case, I'll just roll until 2016 and get a new rig then. I definitely getting that QNIX though, I'll need that 27".

Hmm, well I use http://pcpartpicker.com/. Comes goon recommended, and while it'll hold your hand less, it basically has the internets entire database on available, buyable parts sans auction sites.
 
Also, these are helpful as well, they get updated as time goes on with new uarchs
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-5.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html

Logical increments tends to put weird things on the same scale, as well as not scale them properly.
 
For instance, at the lower end of the scale they have the G3220 and the CX430. The G3220 actually has better single thread and per core performance than the latter suggested X4 Athlons, the Athlons are a waste of money. If you really need the threads you should really throw down the extra change for the FX 6300 or better yet any i3. CX series PSUs, especially lower end ones, are notoriously bad and no site should suggest a PSU that will potentially eat your investment.
 
Another interesting thing to note is the R9 280 being put on the same step as the GTX 960, and while it's true they are in a similar performance bracket, the 280 is actually better in price/perf by a margin as it'll actually use 4GB of memory while the 960 will struggle to do so (never buy a 4GB 960, it's almost scam levels of dumb). Yet LI doesn't tell you this at all.
 
I also dislike the lack of proper scaling - an FX8320 is not just a tier below an i5 anything, I'd slap at least the entirety of the Nehalem between them, as even an i5-2500K is going to beat up a Vishera, even a well binned one. An i3-4130 isn't just better than an X4 860K, it's far and away better as the X4 860K is worse than basically any Phenom II X4, which butted heads with high end C2Qs and early Core I series. This seems to be an awfully simple fix though, just add the percent increase from previous tier (after moving things around) that they've added to the GPUs to the CPUs.
 
I dislike the suggestion of Gigabyte boards, as stated above, and honestly ASrock is far and away the superior company (Yes, not only did I type that, the internet did as well. We're still recovering from shock).
 
Further, case suggestions make no fucking sense. Rosewill Challenger is an inferior case to the similarly priced Cooler Master N200 for instance, The Corsair 350, 450 and 550 are all some of the best price/perf cases yet not a word, and almost all cases seem to be for ATX boards, which is weird to say the least. Putting just bigger cases towards the end of their line ups makes no sense either, full towers are only useful going complete water or running shittons of hard drives for NAS or RAID or some shit. It honestly looks like towards the end of everything it's less how to build a good, enthusiast computer and more how to light money on fire. Here's a suggestion, spend it on hookers and blow and just get an R5 to stuff your X99 sli setup into.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2015/05/orange_county_prosecutor_misconduct_judge_goethals_takes_district_attorney.html
 
Jesus tapdancing unicycle riding flaming chainsaw juggle Christ.

Actually, a recent article someone passed along to me explains why the US is highly unlikely to ever pick that practice up. http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/29/spy-kids/
 
Basically there is no loyalty to the US due to the dissonance in values the country espouses but then does not follow, and a complete lack of viewing jobs as permanent things. Authority, whether it be private or public, is looked upon as automatically corrupt and self-serving. Increasingly, newer generations will actually have stronger ties to the internet, the globe, and to the espoused ideals of the US rather than to the nation itself, hell I'd count myself among them yet I weep and hope for the US yet.
 
This has a lot of roots in different sectors of the US, from economic to social and can only be addressed by serious reforms. Basically, to retard this the state actually needs to begin large scale support and public works projects to improve public and generational perception and support. Government needs to support business with a proven track record of effective employee support. Austerity and continued support of the financial sector is likely only to reinforce the perception that neither public or private institutions have any interest in the general population, and in fact it's likely your most educated which will continue to drift away.
 
IMHO, this also might explain where ISIS gets a lot of foreign fighters, they're early products of this process radicalizing to something they perceive to have a stronger, more robust connection to that they can pledge service or loyalty to.

I was going to write some long winded dissertation about all the things that I have learned from the past 6 years of openly carrying a pistol, but that ended up getting a little jumbled, so I'll finish it later. However, I will say this. When I carry, I want to come across as someone who either should be carrying a gun, or is responsible enough to carry a gun. This is shown through your body language, your behavior, and your appearances. I keep my appearances neat and professional, I walk places with a purpose, I look people in the eyes when I talk to them, things like that. The trick is, to act like someone who is responsible enough to carry, you just have to be responsible enough to carry. Especially when you open carry, you need to have a good sense of discretion. Walking around like its casual Friday with an AK is not discretion, it's mental retardation.

I don't think people are really fully aware of the context of this issue, so here's a quick background.
 
The Spratleys are basically a bunch of unclaimed islands and reefs in the middle of the South China Sea, which may contain some oil deposits. By virtue of being unclaimed and possibly having resources it was subject to a tug-of-war by the region, with China having the biggest share of the pie because they had the biggest stick. The Philippines is the second best claimant because the Spratleys are closest to the Philippines. The status quo for a long time was that each claimant had control of some of them (with China and the PH having the most), and that nobody would start any development unless it has the approval of all the claimants.
 
The problem is that China radically changed its position around 2010, when some frankly crazy people in the military or Politburo decided to change the definition of "Chinese territorial waters". Rather than the usual 12 nautical mile limit, China decided they were extra special and claimed their territorial waters extended to over 200 nautical miles. If the Spratleys were considered to be Chinese territory (albeit the Spratleys, being contested reefs for the most part, don't even count as "land territory" from which territorial waters can be extended - a distinction that becomes important later), this essentially means the entire South China Sea becomes Chinese territorial waters.
 
This may not seem like a big deal, but very many major sea routes go through the Souh China Sea, which feeds all of the major ports in the South East Asia region - particularly Singapore, Manila, Hong Kong, and basically every port in Vietnam. By turning the South China Sea into territorial waters, China is basically saying they have the right to instantly blockade any South East Asian nation.
 
Unfortunately Southeast Asia isn't in any real position to do anything about it. Malaysia and Indonesia are only superficially involved and are busy with their own internal problems. Thailand is technically still in the middle of a coup. Singapore is a city-state and, while having a very advanced military, has to park most of its weapons in America because Changi Naval Station can't fit everything. Vietnam to its credit continued its grand tradition of fighting China in spite of hopeless odds, and got a patrol vessel sunk for its trouble by ramming after it challenged the construction of a Chinese oil rig.
 
That, much to the groan and dismay of the region, means it's up to the Philippines to contest the claim. And given our first action was to rename the "South China Sea" to the "West Philippine Sea" in all of our maps, which was an utterly useless symbolic gesture that only succeeded in getting all of China's Internet trolls to focus their efforts against us, you can see why the region is in utter despair.
 
That said, our governement has somehow managed to be more competent and decided on the pretty smart move of taking the case to the International Tribunal for the Laws of the Sea, which is all but guaranteed to rule against China's 200 nm territorial water claim, and is a potential source of embarassment for a China still styling itself as a benovelent big brother instead of a bully.  
 
The thing is, rather than back down from this legal challenge, China very recently decided to double down on their initial mistake and to defy geography in order to avoid admitting it was wrong regarding claiming the whole South China Sea.
 
Since the first problem with their claim is that the Spratleys are still considered reefs and not islands which can exert territorial influence, China decided to spend a whole lot of money to turn those reefs into actual islands. Since they now have actual "islands" in the area which can theoretically exert territorial control, they can then claim that the other claimants are in fact merely squatters claiming reefs and can therefore be evicted. After which China reasserts its 200 nautical mile territorial water claim and turns the South China Sea into their lake.
 
Hence the recent US interventions. One of the Philippine's side-tactics in the Spratleys game since the early 2010s had been to troll the hell out of the Chinese Navy, which could not really respond to our provocations because they fear it will cause the activation of the Mutual Defense Treaty between the PH and the United States (this is why the only casualties so far in our trolling match were in fact Taiwanese fishermen shot by mistake by the Philippine Navy); and the US for the most part was in fact horrified by this potential flashpoint because they thought the court case would already settle it.
 
The man-made Chinese islands changed all that. The US military (and I hope Obama) are well aware of how this changes the game and can potentially render irrelevant our previous play of taking the case to an international court. That's why they're stepping up the patrols and they're playing tag. They want China to know they're not happy about what they're doing.

Matt Easton outdoes himself in this video, I think:
 

I like how the comments sections is filled with a bunch of manchildren arguing how "the super rich corporations" will kill this. Because clearly Google is just a bunch of small timers who only care about the interest of people and never profits! or that giving them a monopoly on transportation if they effectively did kill the automotive industry would somehow, you know, not make give them complete control over an area they really shouldn't have.
 
Yeah, I'll keep my privately owned car, thanks though. I wouldn't even be bothered if people, perhaps, maybe just thought both could exist in the same world, you know, perhaps people who couldn't afford a car or wouldn't want one otherwise could use this, and those who actually do want one keeps their automobiles, but that's clearly just not possible and nothing more then wishful thinking.

US 90mm guns in WT are the most glorious bullshit, and the best analogue I can come up with WT would be if all 90mm guns started doing 750 damage instead of 240. It gets better as you go up to Era 5, where only US and Russia are relevant.
 
"Hey guys, I've got the Maus now, and and a Jagdtiger!"
"That's nice Germany, can you go play while mommy and daddy talk?"

I must be a stereotypical American, because I have never understood antisemitism. I'm not chest-thumping about how Not Racist I am, I just really don't get it. Hutus and Tutsis I get - it's retarded, but it's the sort of fraternal spat that's common. Antisemitism? Especially among people who may have never seen a Jew in their life?

Nope, I don't understand that.

One in fifteen? That's not the clap, that's a round of applause.

^This^. Teenagers will fuck.  Make sure they have the information to do so safely and not become parents.

But you see, the doctors, who've spent countless dollars and time learning their profession and how to treat the human body, are wrong. They are only cleverly dressed salesmen trying to push evil, autism inducing drugs on your defensless children! Stop the predation, stop BigPharma, we need to return to a more naturalistic, wholesome medicine!
 
The salt must flow...CHEMTRAILS!

Kurdistan is one of the entities that I see as a natural for the region.  
 
Israel, despite the crescendo of stupidity on the subject, has a degree of legitimacy - there were Jews living in Palestine for thousands of years.  In 1948 none of the big Arab powers were talking about an independent Palestine, but instead talking about which chunk they could take for themselves.  In 1949 there were 900,000 Jews in displaced person camps and 900,000 Arabs.  Israel resettled its refugees in a decade without a dime of recompensation from the countries who expelled them.  The Arabs are still in their camps to this day.  From 1948 to 1967 no one in the Arab world who controlled the West Bank or Gaza was all hot to form a nation even though they could.  And for two decades the Arabs could have had the West Bank and Gaza back for peace and recognition.  So from an existential point of view I am in favor of the existence of Israel, and think that if you attack someone and get your but handed you repeatedly then loosing a little land is the least you should pay for the pain.  
 
And Eban is right when he said, "The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity."  
 
However, as an American who is a Republican it makes my stomach churn that Israel has stuck its nose in our politics.  Now support for Israel is political, and someday the political football will be in the hands of a quarter back who won't keep VETO of SC resolutions.  Eban also said "If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions."  In that situation do you really want to bait one of your allies?
 
So if we support Israel, then a Kurdistan is a no brainer.  Like the Jewish state there is land which is lived on by Kurds, they have a cultural identity, and they are a despised minority in many countries where that can lead to genocide.  And since Isis or Syria are the alternative government models that we have been shown, I think Kurdistan is a no brainer.

Iran has a legitimate grievance with Israel, it's way more than mere antisemitism at this point. Also Israel treats the US no different than Turkey does, and it gets worse when even legit criticism of Israel gets their rightwing in a howling rage about antisemitism. In that kind of atmosphere, any relationship will sour, and it makes it difficult for real self-relfection. Israel is about to make it's support a partisan issue, which is dumb, dumb, dumb.

Iran has a legitimate grievance with Israel, it's way more than mere antisemitism at this point. Also Israel treats the US no different than Turkey does, and it gets worse when even legit criticism of Israel gets their rightwing in a howling rage about antisemitism. In that kind of atmosphere, any relationship will sour, and it makes it difficult for real self-relfection. Israel is about to make it's support a partisan issue, which is dumb, dumb, dumb.

In the original trilogy we hear that Jedi Knights were the protectors of the Old Republic.  And yet, the first we see of them in The Phantom Menace, they're being dispatched to do trade negotiations.  This is a little weird; aren't they supposed to be psychic wizard combat monks?  Why would they know anything about general agreements on tariffs and deficits?
 
Well, you see, it's all a mis-translation. Jedi Knights are the protectionists of the Old Republic.  The Sith are supply-side laissez-faire Austrians, who are trying to put the hard-working Naboo out of a job by flooding the market with cheap, foreign-made space products.
 
This theme was elaborated in a scene that was later cut from Return of the Jedi:
 
Emperor Palpatine:  You are no match for the power of the Invisible Hand!
 
Luke:  Your overconfidence in the Law of Comparative Advantage is your weakness.
 
Emperor Palpatine:  Your faith in trade barriers is yours.

I'm personally interested in why German turrets were chronically underarmored from the front for no discernable reason. Even basic testing would have shown the glacis to be an order more resistent to incoming projectiles, yet this design flaw persisted from the Panzer IV up to the Tiger Ausf B. Surely they should have realized it, just as the American did when gunners were instructed to primarily aim for the Panther and King Tiger turrets as the best way to disable the cats, right?
 
I know that the M26 and M46 theoretically falls into this same issue, and to appearances so does the M48, but a quick look in the turret reveals the T99 gun mount to support a 38mm thick internal shield, but even beyond that communications recovered by the Chief (? I believe, I a may be sourcing this wrong) indicate that the Army specifically requested and wanted the M26 M46 tanks to have a turret comparable to the then in limited production M4A3E2 in protection, wherein Barnes lies to them; whether because he thought the truth would slow down deployment, or because he honestly did not know, is not my place to make a call. In any case it seems that the Army did as practice prefer stronger turrets and for good reason as post war studies and standard tank tactics showed.
 
I don't think the M48 falls into the trap since it's using the same post war hit study to maximize armor protection, and cross sections do not tell the whole story on something as complicated on the cast bodies of the M48/M103/M60 tanks.
 
Further, as far as I am aware, all other nations were on the same page as the US - Russia continiously updated the T-34 and KV/IS designs with imrpoved turret armor being a priority, and both France and UK made efforts to at least keep front hull and front turret protection the same.
 
Is this a fascist disease? "I demand a tank reflective of the national peoples ideals!" *builds a tank weak in the head*.

The issue is that the moderate elements in Iran want the deal, but the hardliners do not, so they'll be constantly pulling shit to derail the deal and hopefully discredit the moderate stance of rapproachment with the West. It's the same reason why the US constantly doesn't say anything about the Armenian genocide; despite Turkey being an awful actual ally, they're a mighty fine airbase and it's an airbase we really need so don't piss off and feed the hardliners in Turkey who want to break from the US.

Can I nominate every alien movie ever? Not Alien or Aliens because they strangely get it close to right, but just movies with aliens as an antagonist period.
 
If we accept that intelligent life is possible, or greater than likely, then there is nothing special about humans whatsoever. They have no reason to care or be interested in us, the realities of space travel makes connecting in fellowship with a strange alien species a wasted endeavor. Earth is not only a terrifing gravity well, but resource extraction cost is huge regardless of how you slice it (or pulverize it). Easier to simply plunder the Oort cloud and Kuiper belt effectively forever.

I'm personally interested in why German turrets were chronically underarmored from the front for no discernable reason. Even basic testing would have shown the glacis to be an order more resistent to incoming projectiles, yet this design flaw persisted from the Panzer IV up to the Tiger Ausf B. Surely they should have realized it, just as the American did when gunners were instructed to primarily aim for the Panther and King Tiger turrets as the best way to disable the cats, right?
 
I know that the M26 and M46 theoretically falls into this same issue, and to appearances so does the M48, but a quick look in the turret reveals the T99 gun mount to support a 38mm thick internal shield, but even beyond that communications recovered by the Chief (? I believe, I a may be sourcing this wrong) indicate that the Army specifically requested and wanted the M26 M46 tanks to have a turret comparable to the then in limited production M4A3E2 in protection, wherein Barnes lies to them; whether because he thought the truth would slow down deployment, or because he honestly did not know, is not my place to make a call. In any case it seems that the Army did as practice prefer stronger turrets and for good reason as post war studies and standard tank tactics showed.
 
I don't think the M48 falls into the trap since it's using the same post war hit study to maximize armor protection, and cross sections do not tell the whole story on something as complicated on the cast bodies of the M48/M103/M60 tanks.
 
Further, as far as I am aware, all other nations were on the same page as the US - Russia continiously updated the T-34 and KV/IS designs with imrpoved turret armor being a priority, and both France and UK made efforts to at least keep front hull and front turret protection the same.
 
Is this a fascist disease? "I demand a tank reflective of the national peoples ideals!" *builds a tank weak in the head*.

The issue is that the moderate elements in Iran want the deal, but the hardliners do not, so they'll be constantly pulling shit to derail the deal and hopefully discredit the moderate stance of rapproachment with the West. It's the same reason why the US constantly doesn't say anything about the Armenian genocide; despite Turkey being an awful actual ally, they're a mighty fine airbase and it's an airbase we really need so don't piss off and feed the hardliners in Turkey who want to break from the US.

So, global warming is definitely a thing and definitely caused by human activity (see: vast majority of climate scientists, IPCC). And this makes sense, because humans have been, you know, digging up all the carbon laid down since the carboniferous and burning it.
 
And I have no problems with this at all.
 
Here's my logic:
 
1.
Earth's biosphere is apparently slightly better at burying carbon than recycling it. Therefore, liberating a bunch of carbon is a great idea if we want there to be a lot of it available for the rest of the 4 billion years that our planet has to exist.
 
2.
I love the idea of 2-metre millipedes and dragonflies with the wingspans of eagles. So I'm all for us returning to carboniferous levels of atmospheric oxygen (which is what an excess of carbon dioxide will eventually lead to as biomass increases)
 
3.
I also love the idea of verdant plant life, so lots of CO2 does not faze me overmuch. I'll miss the grasses when they get shuffled to niche habitats in favour of dicots, of course, but that's a separate issue.
 
4.
There is good reason to believe that humans are a massive fluke. After all, it took half of the lifespan of the planet for us to arrive and the earth has birthed no other similarly intelligent species in the past (as far as we can tell). Accordingly; there is good reason to assume that, once our species is gone, it will take at least hundreds of millions of years for something sapient to emerge. In the (unlikely) event that it ever happens again, it would be good for this new species to have a fuel source as potent as coal and oil to draw from. By liberating it now for recycling, we are making sure that it will stick around reasonably close to the surface for long enough to maybe get used by our successors.
 
5.
I've heard some pretty convincing arguments that our present civilization simply could not have arisen without copious amounts of energy. So fossil fuels are a must. We as a species probably have only one shot at becoming truly spaceborne - if we somehow crashed back to the Neolithic now there would be no rung on the ladder of energy sources are to climb to the point where intra-solar spaceflight is viable. So we'd probably be stuck with pre-industrial populations and technologies, spinning our wheels until we exhausted our time on the planet.
 
If we want to get ourselves and our ecology off planet, then right now is the only good time. It follows that we should expend as much effort as possible to push ourselves upwards and outwards before we inevitably fuck everything up. I see no reason why we should not opt, as a species, to burn hot and use as much energy as we can in the hopes of improving our chances.
 
 
So, yeah. Global warming - our fault, pretty inevitably, probably not that great for our present environment, probably pretty good in the very long run, hopefully a necessary byproduct of manning up as a species and taking ourselves and everything we love off-planet. And if we fuck that up; hopefully whatever comes afterwards will be able to make use of the new coal deposits while wondering about the thin, faintly radioactive layer of hydrocarbons and metal oxides that represents humanity's final mark in the geological record.

Steam's commitment to being the games delivery service the gaming community deserves, no more and no less is pretty admirable.