Obsidian

The Ubuntu phone looks pretty cool. I'll be waiting for that to come to market before upgrading to a different device, assuming the one I'm using needs an upgrade. It technically does since it's so out of date, but my needs and expectations for mobile devices haven't changed much since I got it, so it works fine for me still.

False! It's actually Christopher Robbin with a giant Winnie the Pooh vs. Calvin with a giant Hobbs

Playing some early morning Dark Souls before doing some serious work....

Spambot's are raping the SHIT out of the forum! MOTHERF*CKER!

Yeah, I'm trying to kill the guy as fast as possible. 56 seconds is my best, using the rotary saw on his face! .... .... .... Anyone want me to do THEIR heart surgery?

I really like those ideas. Here are some I just thought of on the spot: -You might want to consider expanding into Twitter in addition to Facebook. -Post pictures of flower arrangements, both pre-designed and custom ordered. -If applicable, advertise events that the shop is involved in and post pictures of such.

So I'm officially ahead in Dark Souls than I was in the PS3 version, almost finished and only 22 hours in. I only have a few areas left before getting to the final boss, and so far nothing's been able to take what I'm dishing out (Seath and Nito were pusses)

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For Nvidia, I'd say the 670 is at a sweet spot for price/performance that isn't common in the 660ti or 680 right now. You can get a modest overclock from a 670, at best, since Nvidia has started locking down what you can do with their cards and limiting how much of an overclock you can get from their newer cards in general. Higher-end Nvidia cards usually come with a free game, I think it's Assassin's Creed 3 right now. For AMD, I'd say the 7950. Overclocks very well to match, if not slightly exceed, the performance of a 7970 at stock, and cheaper by about $50. I'm not sure if this is still going on, but AMD is also giving away three free games (Sleeping Dogs, Far Cry 3, and Hitman: Absolution) with the 7950/70.

The drive itself is fine. It was the daughterboard between the drive and the USB interface that was fried. I could get another one, I'm sure, but the case the drive was in can't be reused anyway. My computer situation has changed since I bought the external drive, so I'm just using it internally now for backups.

So a few months ago, my WD mybook essential drive failed. This morning, I decided to open the enclosure and see what was going on because the drive is a decent one to have for backups and the drive failed when it was way out of WD's warranty. After an hour of trying to pry the case off, because WD chose to use a screw-less plastic case for the newer external units and the mybook essentials aren't user-serviceable, I finally got the shell off. Apparently, the passive cooling only works so well because the daughter board was charred in a few places around the main chip. In this case, that chip allows the computer to properly see the partitions on the drive. Without it, the computer will recognize the drive, but see it as unallocated space. So, my data is lost, but the drive itself is saved and I'm testing it in reads and writes to make sure it's stable for backup use.

From a lot of benchmarks I've seen, a triple GTX 680 setup can outperform a dual GTX 690 system for about 3/4 the price. Yes, I know, less CUDA cores, but still... From what I hear it's the difference between running an 8x/8x/8x/8x quad-SLI and a 16x/16x/16x tri-SLI. (it only outperforms if you can run all cards at 16x speeds) A dual GTX 680 will max out any game currently on the market, and only drops below 60 FPS if you're running a triple monitor setup with the biggest performance hogs there are. Triple 680 will bring it back up to 60 FPS on a triple monitor system. (or so the benchmarks I've seen seem to say)/ Very true, but my original statement was for single-cards only. I'm a firm believer in buying one powerful single card and not bothering with multi-GPU setups, even it it is multiple top-tier cards.

http://www.technewsdaily.com/16514-unlocking-cellphones-becomes-illegal.html What's 1 more reason to hate the DMCA when there's already one-million? One-million and one. Basically, starting tomorrow, newly purchased phones can't be unlocked by anyone but the carrier in the US. Funny how when our government gets shit done, it's shit that doesn't really help anyone. I'd even argue that this isn't a decision that'll make a massive impact on the telecom companies' profits. In the US, when you buy a subsidized phone, you get locked into a 2-year contract (or expand your current contract for another year, depending on the carrier). Even if you unlock and sell your subsidized phone, you're still obligated to pay for the service. If you choose to eliminate your contract, you're subject to cancellation fees. I don't see a situation here where unlocked devices takes away from revenue, aside from people maybe not wanting to buy a new phone (although most people seem to upgrade their mobiles every two years anyway).

It's actually a great GPU, besides from the known problems with Java and the Radeon series' cards. Only problem I've run into are slight video problems running Spiral Knights. I get around 50-60 FPS Running Unreal Tournament Black Edition while recording with FRAPS. I think it's good, but I hope to upgrade at some point in the future. Eh, I personally can't call anything that's not a dual 7970 or GTX 690 an amazing GPU. By that measure, even my 7950 isn't amazing, but it's still pretty damn good. At least you have one of the better 7770's available. Personally, I probably would've gone with the Asus card because they have one with a 2gb frame buffer over the standard 1gb.

Looks like a slightly-above-average system to me. Decent quad core CPU, above average but by no means amazing GPU, lots of RAM. I'd say it's a solid 7/10 system.

From my experience with the demo Microsoft released, Windows 8 is okay if you don't need to work with multiple windows at once. If you need to have three or more windows open, then you're kind of screwed for full screen use. You can open them in the desktop if you need to, but why should we have to jump through another hoop just to get to where we were in W7? That's not even taking into account the awkward placement of contextual menus, too, which adds a lot of mileage onto your mouse.

Fair enough, and a very valid point about the L2 cache. I was just surprised about how odd the benchmarks of sites I frequent don't accurately represent the performance of the CPUs. There's very little point in investing in older hardware, unless the newer stuff is somehow inferior.

Yeah, lately I've been trying to get into Arch, but I don't have the time to devote to learning it right now.

Finally got around to doing schoolwork. Such a bore.

New wallpaper. Anyone with a childhood should recognize this.

I don't know if that thing's going to be the Steam Box anymore. I mean, sure, Valve, Steam, Piston (the name of the 'box') all makes sense. But what about this? It's the Piston Xi3. We all know Valve has trouble with the number 3...

Wait, where do afros and tits fall in? Was that BEFORE or AFTER the coke and afros phase?

By the numbers, I'd say my favorite game system was the PS2. It had an amazing library that could cater to a lot of different tastes and the controller was amazing (fuck you, Sony, if that rumor about the PS4 controller turns out to be true!!). But now, going forward, I'd say the PC is my favorite platform. Much more versatile for games (I can play all my PS2 games on my PC flawlessly with better resolutions and load times, other emulators are awesome), and I find the overall experience to be better with PC titles compared to their console equivalents. The PC versions of Skyrim, Dark Souls, Fallout 3 and NV, to name a few, just whip the PS3 versions in so many ways. The only thing I wish for is better controller support, because I do, from time to time, enjoy playing my games with a controller in bed and it's just more convinient.

Putting off replying to some discussion questions for school. I want to see what kind of quality the other students are posting because I've never been in a class that uses discussion boards for assignments like this. Kind of annoying since we have about 4 hours of class per week on a ground campus, so this is just encouraging introverted behavior in a way...