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Sacrieur

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Posts posted by Sacrieur

  1. Don't get a Dell, they skimp on areas that will fail in a year or two, and that includes Alienware.

    Toshiba makes okay laptops, Asus is okay, and Lenovo is generally terrific all around. I always recommend Lenovo when I can because tech support is good and they don't skimp on anything, plus all their products are solid.

    HP builds can be okay, maybe. Acer isn't worth mentioning.

  2. Who still uses CDs?

    How about we test your claim with Soluto.

    xam8b.png

    It takes me 14 seconds to boot up essentials (13 seconds without Soluto), and 20 seconds with various "bloatware" like my video card driver and dropbox. A HDD isn't coming anywhere near these speeds. Even a 15k RPM cheetah SCSI drive won't touch them.

    Right now you can get an Intel 240 GB SSD, Sata III for $250, that's $1.04 per GB. Compare this to January when they were twice that much. They're dropping in price, fast.

  3. Don't do it! It's a trap!

    Which is true, really. I always advise people not to go for gaming laptops because it's like wanting to go walking in death valley but not wanting to be hot.

    So there are gaming laptops: that is, laptops that can run your games on maxed settings and turn those dials up to eleven -- but, they're expensive. I don't mean a grand expensive, I mean /really/ expensive. Like 3-4 times the cost of a desktop with identical capabilities. At least, if you want a gaming laptop that's a laptop and not a brick you lug around and won't overheat just starting up windows.

    Ah yes, see you want portability, but also performance. Sorry, that's just not possible, even in the high end.

    Look, so you have a laptop with gaming capabilities, how long can you game on it before the battery dies? An hour? two? Three, max. You could always lug around a spare battery, oh or a power cable. But that's just more stuff to carry around.

    And what about a mouse, you're going to have to take that to carry around with you as well if you want to start up some FPS fun with your new shiny.

    And then there's cooling, oh bother have fun with that. Higher voltage comes at a price, you know.

    And then there's the fact it's a very expensive laptop that your dragging around on campus subject to who knows what kind of abuse and is your only computer -- not to mention the possibility of theft (get up to use the bathroom at your library and watch it disappear).

    ---

    But you don't have that much to spend on a laptop. $1k? K, enjoy your $500 desktop performance on something that overheats, is bulky, and can't hold a charge.

    I strongly advise to pick out a nice cheap, portable laptop or netbook, < $500 and spend the rest on a desktop that you can use for gaming. Why? Because you scrub it's far smarter to have two computers than one to begin with, and you'll get the same gaming performance without all of the problems mentioned above. You're really not going to be gaming in your classes, not if you're going into engineering (good luck :s).

  4. No website is safe, really. There's going to be some computer vulnerability somewhere that someone can exploit and gain access to your system. But rest assured these forums probably don't have any exploits that some raging fourteen year old could copypasta from youtube. Even something like an SQL injection would be far out of their abilities. I do hope passwords here are stored as hashes and not plain text. But, even in the unlikely case of uncrackable security, good ol' social engineering could work.

    But again, why would they want to hack your account?

    It's highly unlikely anyone who would want to hack your account on these forums possesses the skills to do so.

    If you're asking if this website is free of malware, it is. Although you can run noscript if you're paranoid.

  5. Romney's technology and science policies are actually better than Obama's, but I feel he would do far better in congress with that than as president, where his other policies wouldn't make it terribly worth it. And so that he can convince other Republicans to work on resolving issues like global warming, of which he is an advocate of helping aggressively mitigate.

    I am striving towards a PhD in mathematics, specifically number theory. I would love to teach as a professor at a large university -- which is my dream at the moment. Sweden is appealing to me at the moment, but Norway isn't too far behind. As large and diverse as America is, we're not so awesome as to do things like run out of trash to turn into electricity and start importing it from other countries, or have a low crime rate. If things keep going as it is, there will be a brain drain from the US, and I've no reservations about jumping ship.

  6. My main reason for being compelled to vote for Obama is that with the race seeming so close, I really don't want Romney to get in office. Slashing domestic programs without touching (or even raising) our defense budget alarms me a bit.

    As for higher taxes on the rich. The Bush-era tax cuts have me scratching my head. Why did we go to war and then allow tax cuts? If you go to war, take responsibility. Taxes should be raised during war time to help fund the operation -- because if it's what the American people really want, then we have to suck it up and pay the bill.

    It's really scary to think we're so much of warmongers we would consider cutting funding to NASA or PBS, but won't cut funding to our military when there is no real threat to our national security (not just terrorists -- talking invasion/full blown warzone).

  7. We're about half a century to a century behind Scandinavia in terms of economic/cultural development. I say we have a lot of work ahead of us. It's my intention to leave America once I get my PhD.

    I have no desire to work in a society that is so far behind, or even one that Mooseman9 describes (perhaps especially). Further, it's ultimate goal of humanity, I think, that to thrive we need a purpose and not a paycheck.

    I side fairly heavily with Gary Johnson, but not terribly far away from Obama, as well. I have a little bit of compassion for the guy because with healthcare, it's really helping people, and looking people in the eye and telling them they're going to die when it's in your power to help them? Yeah, that's tough, and I know he's visited plenty of people who would benefit from nationalized healthcare, so he's got the experience.

  8. No memes: If you post up a meme, saying "OH MAI GAWD IT'S OVER 9000!" or something related to a popular meme, first, stand up, next, sit down, then, ask yourself, do "I copy other people just to become popular?" If you want to post a meme, make your own, don't go copying others.

    I take disagreement with this policy. Explanation can be found more eloquently than I can provide here.

    I think a better policy would be to require posts to contain content beyond just a meme. Memes aren't about being cool or hip, a lot of the time its about communicating a specific emotional response or opinion.

  9. Psychonauts is actually pretty popular. So is Supreme Commander.

    Skies of Arcadia was a particularly good RPG, although I reckon that's not as underground as people around here would expect.

    Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble gets my nomination. It's a GBA cartridge that was loads of fun, I don't think it was terribly popular though.

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