Wist

Cheers! I don't know you, but that doesn't matter. Congratulations!

That doesn't sound like fun. What kind of sound is it making, a clicking, a whirring like it's constantly trying to read data, or something else? Is the drive being detected by the computer? I'm aware of a few basic things you could try out depending on what might have malfunctioned or suffered damage, but to be honest I've never had to actually try any of them myself.

In university my advisor was an authority on queer scholarship who considered promoting the study of queer theory his most important role. My experiences with him gave me the impression that, as kdanger suggested, queer as a term has pretty much been successfully reclaimed by the LGBT community, but I never use it myself. It's a convenient umbrella term, but like Iridium I'm cautious about its relatively recent common use as an insult. I had a gay room-mate last year who I never once heard use the word queer, and he was heavily interested in LGBT perceptions in society; obviously he's just one person, but thinking back I regret never having asked his opinion on it.

I thought I'd be at the absolute low end, but it looks like my 70 to 80 words per minute isn't embarrassingly poor. Hurrah! I probably type a little bit faster than that, but I make a lot of mistakes (in the range of ten to fifteen a minute...) so I'm always skipping back and forth as I fix foolings typos. I use a slightly customized QWERTY layout, but there's only one change that might have any influence on my typing speed: a happy swap of Backspace and Caps Lock. I used to frequently mishit Caps Lock and I think it's much easier to fix a deleted letter than rewrite a word or two accidentally capitalized, but the biggest reason I made the change is that my little finger barely moves laterally so I used to have to move my whole hand to hit Backspace. I make that mistake all the time at work now, though. Backspace should always have been more conveniently placed....

I can't help but suspect they did that precisely because of people like me. 8[

Does anyone know if the Vita in the Call of Duty bundle has Call of Duty branding across the back? If it doesn't, then I might try to pick up the bundle and sell Call of Duty.

[spoiler=Triceratops]Coming in at nine metres - 30 feet - in length, Triceratops was first discovered in Colorado in 1887. A medium sized dinosaur, it was one of the last of its kind to become extinct, probably because it was a solid beast, more than capable of looking after itself. Many specimens found have bones damaged from fights with rivals or predators. Although a docile creature that just spent its time grazing like some sort of prehistoric cow, Triceratops would easily fight off any predators thanks to its three horns and fan like protective frill round it’s skull, made entirely of bone. Like Triceratops, you are sturdy, reliable and dependable. You keep yourself to yourself and are content just to potter about the place, minding your own business. However, if anyone crosses you, you are quick to react and won’t back down. People need friends like you! Magnificent.

I like you. Any idea when it'll be apparent where it will and won't be cold enough for snowfall during the event, or will that remain unclear until it lands?

!!

These oversights must be rectified immediately! This is really, really tough.... It is my firm belief that Ike-Mike aka Big_Boss dislikes Radiant Dawn simply because it's not as NOCH NIE DAGEWESENEN ACTION IN EXTREM AUSSERGEWÖHNLICHEN UMGEBUNGEN or ACTION-PORNO DER SUPERLATIVE as other games.

That's a good point. Coincidentally, I remember investigating the G73Jh two years ago, and complaints about ASUS touchpads and keyboards in particular ran rife in reviews. I dismissed and forgot about it because I was only considering it as a portable desktop and would have used a mouse and external keyboard regardless, but obviously that's probably not ideal.

I ask this in earnest: what make water temples difficult or frustrating? I usually enjoy them, and I don't understand why they suffer seemingly universal disdain.

The display size is 15.6". 1366x768 at 15.6" is awful unless one has poor eyesight. If his only concern is playing every game on the market at their highest graphics settings while maintaining a consistent 60+ framerate, regardless of how they actually look on the screen, then yes, the cheap 1366x768 screen with abominable contrast would be the better bet. Games will look better at below native resolution on a 1920x1080 than at native resolution on a giant 1366x768. Except the Ivy i7 and 660M will play most games at 1920x1080 on ultra settings at 30fps anyways. He'd have to play Crysis 2 and The Witcher 2 on medium, but if most of his time spent on games goes into Battlefield 3 or Diablo III or Skyrim, for example, there is absolutely no reason to consider the 1366x768 screen (he'd have to play Skyrim on high if he wants it to play perfectly smoothly, but that does nothing to "butcher" the image quality). If he wants to be able to play everything that comes over the next four years at maximum settings or playing everything that's out right now at a solid 60fps he should be deciding against getting a laptop, not against getting a good screen. If he's willing to put over $1000 into a gaming laptop, it's worth the extra money to get the denser display; it makes no sense to get such a terrible screen when anything released before 2011 and most anything on the market today will run well at the higher resolution with a little extra heat being the only drawback. He also said he's getting the laptop for college, so presumably he'll be relying on it for work. Of course he could make do... but opting for a 1366x768 screen over a 1920x1080 one for schoolwork would be an exercise in asininity given the options he's considering. Though in the end of the day he should obviously get what he thinks he'll be happiest with.

I know you intentionally asked specifically about gaming laptops, but I feel like this question should be obligatory, just to be sure: are you sure you'd be best served by getting a gaming laptop instead of getting a desktop and recycling an old laptop or netbook just for word processing in class or at the library? If you're absolutely positive your answer is yes, and if you want the y580 for playing games, I'd caution against settling for the default 1366x768 screen. 768 is very shallow, even for word processing and Internet browsing, but especially for games if you're willing to spend around / over $1000 for a machine. What games do you want to play? The Ivy Bridge i7 and 660M should play any modern PC game or emulator reasonably well, but I don't know what your standards for "reasonably well" are. I suppose you could look at what Asus offers. I can't offer any informed suggestions though; I don't follow laptops at all so I'll stop here.

The United States must be one of the worst places to watch the Olympics in. One needs a cable subscription to watch anything on-line, and if one is able to watch it all that gets broadcast are recordings with a glut of commercials every five minutes anyways. I consistently regret that major, global sporting events like the Olympics or the World Cup are impaired by unfortunate commercial and political motivations - Olympic spirit indeed. But I don't want to trash the thread espousing complaints. I think the track events can be quite exciting, and archery too in its own way. And of course the football; I regret not seeing any of the games so far, both the men's and the women's. I'd be interested in watching the fencing too. Here are the schedules for each event, as well as medals won (once they are won): Full Schedule ⋅ Full Schedule (Wikipedia) ⋅ Sports Overview ⋅ Participating Countries ⋅ Participating Athletes Archery Athletics (Track) Badminton Basketball Beach volleyball Boxing Canoe - Slalom Canoe - Sprint Cycling - BMX Cycling - Mountain Biking Cycling - Road Cycling - Track Diving Equestrian Fencing Football (Soccer, if you don't know the proper word) Gymnastics - Artistic Gymnastics - Rhythmic Handball Hockey Judo Modern Pentathlon (Fencing, Swimming, Equestrian, Shooting, Running) Rowing Sailing Shooting Swimming Synchronized Swimming Table Tennis Taekwondo Tennis Trampoline Triathlon (Swimming, Cycling, Running) Volleyball Water Polo Weightlifting Wrestling Glad I didn't hit a link limit.

I have this problem. When I have the chance to play a game, I shuffle between whatever I have the inclination to play at that moment and I end up almost never beating anything. My backlog is outright embarrassing. If you feel like completing some games is more important to you than just having fun flipping around between them, then what I find sometimes works is setting aside one or two games and refusing to play anything else until I beat it/them, even if I get new games. Once I've done that I focus on one or two different games and repeat the process. This will probably work for you too if you don't stress over what you pick, knowing you'll eventually get to everything you want to play, and you are firm with yourself about not making allowances for other titles (unless a friend comes to visit, or something like that). If you do that and you have allocate a lot of time to games anyways you'll probably be surprised at how many you can get through (again, if what you're most concerned about is building up a pile of games you haven't played or beaten).