Is this year actually a warmer year? Didn't I just read that we're in a 20-year hiatus in the warming trend?

Yes, warmer air holds more moisture -- anyone who has worked the steam tables to convert between relative and absolute humidity knows that (and I have done so for my auroral photo opportunity prediction freeware), but it's also susceptible to precipitating more moisture when convection brings that moist air up into the colder altitudes. That's why tropical rainfall tends to be in deluges as compared to, for instance, the typical rain shower in Pennsylvania. We know for a fact that the tropics are warmer and wetter in terms of rainfall amounts per year -- and that since they are warmer, their air can hold more moisture. But that's not stopped them from having much more rainfall than anywhere else. While there certainly may be outlier statistics, the general case seems clearly to be: warmer = wetter = more rainfall.

Temperate rainforests get as much 100 inches / year. Tropical rainforests get up to 400 inches / year. If it's not the heat that's doing it, what do you propose is the mechanism?

If it *is* the heat that's doing it, then what is the mechanism where more heat, heat that corresponds with previous tropical climates in the earth's past, won't repeat the same effect here? Looking at the past CO2 level graphs as correlated with plant growth and temperature, there's a very strong correlation with CO2 and plant growth, and with temperature. Plants love CO2, but they still need moisture to survive, and where there's more plant growth, it's pretty much a certainty that there's a significant water supply.

So far, anyway, the idea of warming in the tropics -- or anywhere there's basically unlimited water and related prevailing winds -- leading to drought seems to be a non-starter.

It's not that I can't accept it, it's just that to accept it, I need a sound scientific reason to do so. Just saying that one expects drought in the tropics seems like hand-waving at this point. There are plenty of legitimate concerns - a slight, very, very slow rise in sea level, movement of crop-appropriate bands in cultivated areas, that sort of thing, but tropical drought doesn't appear to be one of them.

Also, recent news shows increased plant growth worldwide... something to think about in a situation where CO2 is known to be increasing at an accelerated rate.

I get the feeling there's a superhero origin story somewhere in all this "Let's bombard active nuclear fuel rods with muons and see what happens".

But if I'm trying to game on an old i5-750, wouldn't this be a good time to upgrade to one of the cheaper 4-core Haswells that are running 3.8mhz instead of 2.7? Maybe a Haswell i5 (I guess, I'd need a new mobo then, right?) And the latest PCI-E for a new graphics card.

I don't like to buy the newest and best, but when the second newest becomes cheap. I've got a really nice case, but I'm not sure if I could put a new processor into my old motherboard or if it would even be worth it.

I'd like to do something before the fall games come out. Would I be better off just upgrading my old Radeon HD6850 to a nvidia 760 or a Radeon R9 285 or something?

And did I fall through a wormhole and end up at Tom's Hardware?

Yesterday in my repair shop

Wait, there are still computer repair people?

Say, if I buy a new video card, you think you could come over to my house and install it before Assassin's Creed Unity comes out? There's $50 in it for you. I live in Chicago.

3 secs should be just enough to click the "more information" link.

I'm pretty sure that unless he's suffering from the DTs, it won't take him 3 seconds to click a link.

Most won't even care about that, they just install without reviewing.

I doubt it's much different in other platforms. Mac OS or Android or Linux. When there is an update, most people don't have the time to carefully go over what it's doing. Nor should they.

When the plumber comes to my house, as he did yesterday, all I care about is that the hot water is coming and the toilets flush. I don't crawl under the sink to see if he properly greased the pipes or whatever the hell it is plumbers do.

I have met people who work for Microsoft and Apple and they are neat and earnest and are by all appearances proper and trustworthy citizens. I've also met people who contribute to open source OSs. They look like the guy who stands on the on-ramp with a sign asking for change. A little bit dangerous with greasy hair and a a psychotic glimmer in the eyes.

I'm kidding of course, and just tweaking people who use Linux (like myself), but as Eclipse (played by Frank McRae) said to Sylvester Stallone upon his imprisonment in the classic American film Lock Up, "You gotta trust somebody. Let me hip you to the joint."

some might find it more convenient than dealing with dodgy/illegal web sites, poor quality cracks, possible malware, and other annoyances.

The top torrent sites are a lot less "dodgy" than uplay (and have better uptime), and the best of the scene outfits put out cracked products that are often more stable than the companies that produce the games.

How many times have we heard about games that had huge problems because of their DRM that were fixed in the torrent?

There may be arguments for using Valve/Origin/Uplay etc over torrents but the ones you mention aren't really among them.

Burvixese

The Burvixese race evolved on the planet Arcturus 1, progressing from turtle-like swamp dwellers to a benevolent, highly technological society in just over fifteen million Earth years. Although the Burvixese had the wherewithal to build crude interplanetary vessels, they preferred to remain on the comfortable damp surface of their world and explore the galaxy through HyperWave communication. Using this method, the Burvixese made contact with several neighboring alien cultures, including the Utwig, the Gg, and unfortunately, the Druuge, whom the Burvixese would have been much better off never finding. For many decades, the Burvixese exchanged information with these races, trading technological, historical and philosophical facts and theories, until the fateful year 2142. It was then that the Gg announced that they had come under attack by a unknown alien race, who appeared to want nothing less than their complete annihilation. The Gg surmised that the hostile race, the Kohr-Ah, had located them using the Gg's HyperWave transmissions. Knowing that they had little chance of survival, the Gg warned the Burvixese that, unless they restricted their own transmissions, they too might face a gruesome fate.

Being a charitable race, before the Burvixese turned off their HyperWave transmitters, they shared the Gg's warning with the Druuge. But it was too late. The Druuge's powerful advertising beacons had already attracted the attention of the murderous Kohr-Ah, who, having finished with the Gg, began moving in the general direction of the Persei constellation, home of the Druuge. Realizing their peril, the Druuge took immediate action. They ceased all transmissions and sent a task force of their fastest ships to the moon of the Burvixese world. Once there, the task force assembled a huge HyperWave broadcaster on the moon's surface. When it was complete, the Druuge activated the unit which began emitting powerful HyperWave signals, focused directly toward the oncoming Kohr-Ah fleet. The Druuge hoped that the hostile aliens would change course toward the Burvixese planet and fail to find their own worlds. Unfortunately, this ruse was all too effective: the Kohr-Ah changed course, attacked the poor Burvixese and, sadly, destroyed them all in three days of orbital bombardment.

-- Star Control 2 Resource Guide

I MUST OWN THEM ALL HRRRGRRBLLL DIGITAL HOARDING

*ahem*

Sorry about that. I tend to get a little foamy when I digitally hoard. Anyways, counter to your point it's fun (for me, YMMV of course) to have as many as you can get. Sometimes I'll fire up MAME and simply pick out old games at random. Some I remember, some I never have seen before. It's like being an archaeologist in your own past. I'll do the same thing with C64 archives and Amiga archives (look for Amiga Tosec). Scores of Atari 2600 games. All the video discs for Daphne (the videodisc game emulator). Dragon's Lair, anyone?

It's a wish come true for younger-me. I used to mow lawns just to save up and get an Atari cartridge. Now I can download Stella and inside of ten minutes have ALL of them. Fun! And yes, someday I will make a MAME cabinet. Oh yes. It will be glorious.

So basically TL;DR it's really fun to poke around with. And really, with the price of storage these days you can store the entire library of an entire genre on a few blu ray discs. A 3 Tb hard drive is about $100 at NewEgg. Why not have them?

It's possible to be a lucrative demographic without having PR money. Case in point: Alcoholics.

I think the wholesale failure of web 2.0 sites to facilitate any discussion of these issues over the last few weeks proves just how shallow their promise of a brave new web is. The scope and scale of the censorship seen around this issue is to my knowledge unprecedented.

Slashdot had the right ethics and mores all along, Anonymous Cowards and all. The community can mod them down, but even they should be free to speak.

I think a poster on the escapist forums but it most succinctly: "The gaming community is being bullied for profit".

The gaming community is being singled out for being misogynist, over the film/tv industry, over the music business, over religious groups, because they are a relatively easy target who won't put up as much of a fight. While it's almost certain that Sarkeesian has received threats, let's be honest, they do not carry anywhere near the same weight as those which would come from, say, a religious group who was called out for being conservative. Gamers also lack the PR money to respond, which would be readily available to entertainment companies. Overall, it's a fairly safe group to criticize.

I'm sure that misogyny exists in video games, but no more (and I would argue to a lesser extent) than that seen in general society and other forms of entertainment. Yet Sarkeesian and her backers have launched what amounts to an internet crusade against the most counter-cultural -- and I would argue visibly progressive -- media industries.

Her videos present selectively chosen examples from several video games, purporting to show that games are actually hateful towards women. Many of us have played several of these titles, and can judge how exaggerated such claims are. Indeed, using Sarkeesian's techniques, it would be perfectly possible to go through these games and more, and selectively picks clips and examples "proving" that games and the gaming industry promote animal cruelty.

Yet no-one makes the animal cruelty argument about video games. And the reason is I think obvious -- The misogynist argument makes more money. Sarkeesian has been backed to the tune of $150,000 to makes these videos. Sites like Kotaku generate huge ad-revenue from the inevitable click-bait headlines which follow from these exaggerated claims. The more games who take the bait, who defend their hobby from these accusations, the more revenue goes to the people making and promoting them.

This does not represent a genuine feminist movement. This represents a business model. Gamers are being singled out and bullied -- over religious conservatives, over music video directors, over corporate policies towards women -- because gamers are an easier and more lucrative target. Gamers are "hate-baited" with very, very ugly accusations painting them as haters of women, so that their predictable responses can be farmed out to ad-servers and marketing firms. Bullied; for profit.

I've played video games since 1990; I do not hate women; My hobby does not hate women; The vast majority of people who play video games do not hate women. Please, Sarkeesian's of the world, turn your attentions to the people who do.

Just over a month ago, Steam has a sale on some very big games, like Wolfenstein: New Order and Splinter Cell: Blacklist. (maybe it's all the colons that take up the space.

It doesn't take too many games at over 20gig each, along with Netflix for the wife and streaming music before you're knocking on 150gig.

Why in the world the Wolfenstein game came out to over 40 gig I'll never know, but sure enough, for the first time I got the email from AT&T that I was at 90% of my limit. Fortunately, it was two days before the billing cycle rolled over, so I didn't have to pay.