Michael McAllister

Binge watching.

The supposed anti-trust laws in the United States are a joke. Microsoft got sued for doing similar things with Windows. Comcast is effectively dragging down an entire industry of services. The only recourse I can think of other than moving is to contact the major video streaming services and complain about this. This move directly affects their bottom line so Amazon, Google, and Netflix have a vested interest to take legal action against Comcast.

Small tangent: I've heard similar arguments against free porn that are made against ad blockers. If you want companies to keep making the content, pay for it. In theory, this comes from a noble place. The problem lies within not only the business model, but the security implementation (or lack thereof) on a surprising number of these premium paywall sites. In the interest of science, I looked up some of the more well-known distributors and was surprised to find that their sign-up pages aren't encrypted! That's right. The end user is supposed to provide password and payment information in plaintext! Whenever someone mentions porn, Brazzers seems to be a common name drop in a joke punchline. Checked it out and it is plagued with this issue as well. In reason 5,947 for why people don't pay for porn, this one is baffling to me. A site would go out of their way to pay for bandwidth but dropping the cash for a SHA256 certificate is asking too much? Hell, why not a Let's Encrypt certificate? They're free.

Yup, I prefer to use Group Policy over the Registry any day. It's really easy to render a computer inoperable through an incorrect Registry edit. I only do it if I absolutely have to. Having a GUI interface is much nicer.

You should be able to disable Cortona through the Group Policy editor if you have Windows 10 Pro or above. I did that and she hasn't bugged me since. Navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Search. Look for Allow Cortona. Source: http://www.howtogeek.com/265027/how-to-disable-cortana-in-windows-10/

Yes, technically it is. Simply put, human psychology is a bitch. A law permitting freedom to make personal decisions is very different from having the will or knowledge to take advantage of it to the fullest extent.

No, of course not. You said beliefs are not race. I was addressing that point. Generally, yes. Beliefs are optional but it also depends on what the belief is. PC versus console, Mac versus PC, Dodge versus Chevy—those are preferences which can change fairly easily. On a more serious point, a political or religious ideology is not as malleable. That's what Ben Affleck seemed to be trying to get at when he said, "It's gross; it's racist!" I don't agree with his whole point, but I understand it. Real Time doesn't offer the best format for nuanced discussion anyway, but that's a whole other discussion. As an atheist, I could hypothetically have a seething hatred of all religious people because of their ideas. It wouldn't be racist, but it would be prejudiced to some degree, especially if it were irrational (Note: I don't hate all religious people). Many Republicans, Democrats, atheists, religious people, were raised in an environment that allowed for those opinions to ferment. I wish that were universally true. It isn't, though. In most cases, people do not choose their religion. This is also true for politics. Sure, people can change, but that takes introspection and that is one of the more difficult things for humans to do.

You're trying to make a pretty ridiculous distinction. A belief is synonymous with opinion. Surely, you're not trying to suggest that because a belief is not a race, it's impossible to hold racist opinions, correct? If you are, that doesn't make much sense. If a person holds the belief that a certain race of people are inferior to another, that is a racist opinion. What I think Michael Pachter is trying to convey is that some PC users look down upon those who use consoles rather than PCs because they are using the "superior" platform. You could argue that his sentiments are poorly worded, but they are not entirely false. Now, if you're saying that preferring one platform over another is akin to finding a certain hair color or eye color more attractive/more preferable than something else, I agree. Being attracted to a certain body type or hair color or eye color is not, in and of itself, racist. If a person purposefully went out of their way to discriminate against someone of a different eye color or hair color because of their preference, it would be prejudiced at a minimum.

Well, I was going to. Either their forum software is buggy or does not allow links to be posted. Oh joy.

All right. Unfortunately, my mention of this issue on EVGA's forum hasn't seemed to garner much attention. One user replied saying the issue has been fixed for him long ago. Now that I know I'm not the only one with this issue, it would be helpful if users here would kindly report their findings to EVGA if you have not done so already.

I remember in my trial and error, I did find that switching to Arial did work. I do not remember If Sans-Serif worked. I have since used a restore point to correct the issue, which unfortunately also means not using the software. If I'm not mistaken, the software will not run without a GPU being detected, correct? I have a Windows 7 VM I could use to re-create the issue but it may not run in a virtualized environment.

I used to play The Sims 3 back in the day. For whatever reason, that game seems to run like garbage no matter what computer hardware is thrown at it. It was not uncommon for the game to take about three or four minutes to load. I don't know who is responsible for quality control at EA but they probably should be fired.

That's all right. I'm not much of a videographer myself. I do know from personal experience, though, that raw, lossless footage is extremely demanding on storage. A few years back, I transferred some camera footage directly from my mom's old digital camera to make a family video in post. The footage was at best DVD quality—borderline VHS. Footage was a little over an hour and it was about 5 GB. After editing and encoding, I was able to knock it down to about 1 GB or so.

Are you talking about raw footage or encoded H.264? Those numbers seem extremely small for 4K60 raw.

Unless a utility is used to write zeros to the whole drive over multiple passes, you cannot be sure that data is not recoverable. Considering how inexpensive drives are, I would recommend either keeping the drive or using a very strong neodymium magnet on the platters. A hammer works, too.

Update: After moving to Windows 10, this issue has crept back on me (my main reason for blowing away my Windows 7 installation). A day or two ago, I installed EVGA's Precision X OC just to create a more aggressive fan profile for higher boost clocks. The issue seems to be related that. I reverted back to system restore point and the issue is fixed. According to an OP on EVGA's forums from 2014, the software for some reason deletes the Arial Bold font from the Windows folder. Why this is still an issue after so many revisions, I don't know.

If Nvidia's performance is worse in DirectX 12, why not just use DirectX 11? The performance will vary between games anyway, regardless of whether or not you choose AMD or Nvidia. Just use the card that performs the best in the games you play. This whole notion that Pascal is useless doesn't hold much water because you're not just paying for the hardware. You're also paying for the software suite which enables things like Ansel, adaptive v-sync, G-Sync, and ShadowPlay. Granted, there are third-party software solutions to take advantage of the GPU H.264 encoding (i.e. OBS), but having that option baked into a software package makes it easy and convenient to use.

It's a bit nuts that the Pro does not have 4K Blu-ray support. 4K Blu-ray players are already being released and the Xbox One S natively supports it. Not much of a reason for home theater enthusiasts to purchase one then.

Does the slim model have a 4K Blu-ray drive? If not, then I agree.

Honestly, consoles don't bother me. The only thing that irritates me about consoles is that many of the games on them are exclusive to that platform. I have a much more powerful computer by comparison, so I would like to be able to take advantage of it. Being forced to buy a gaming console just to play one game that isn't on the PC platform is ridiculous. Consoles definitely have their place, especially for those individuals who do not want to deal with the hassle of installing drivers or the issues that could arise from doing so.

If by 4K they mean small indie games a la XBLA, then maybe at 30 FPS. Other than that, it's complete bullshit.

The same argument could be made about computer components. It depends on where they're sourced. The potential for failure exists in all electronics.

You're welcome. I'm basing this information off of experience with other Amazon shows. I have no idea if their policy will be different for this show.

I fixed it—sort of. I reverted back to a system image I made a little over a week ago and the problem appears to be fixed in Chrome. Firefox automatically synced my new add-ons and the problem showed up again. I had checked all the options except for sync bookmarks, refreshed Firefox and the problem still persists. It's also still in Internet Explorer. I guess I could reinstall Windows, but it would've been nice to avoid that.

Update: This appears to be an issue on Giant Bomb as well. Thoughts?