I installed 8.1 and the first two things I noticed- 1) it reset my icon size to medium, which on my 2560x1440 monitor looks ridiculous and given how they imported all my other settings... why? and 2) the HDMI output of my motherboard stopped working. After installing 8.1, I did some searching and apparently Sandy Bridge was not included in Intel's beta driver development for graphics for 8.1 and there is no known development being done for Sandy Bridge, so if I want to continue using my computer to communicate via the HDMI port to my television I need to upgrade to an Ivy Bridge, drive my 'small' 2nd monitor off of VGA (no fscking way, but supposedly analog ports off of S.B. are working fine- I haven't tested it), or upgrade my video card to one that can drive a 3rd (non-DP) monitor. Yes, I could also switch my DVI 2nd monitor to the mobo and put my TV into the HDMI on my video card, but that causes some really strange window relocation issues when waking out of sleep- I have tried that in the past.

For people using only on-board video via HDMI to their sole monitor and without a desire to upgrade S.B. or buy a new computer, it must be enraging. I guess I am lucky, upgrading this motherboard (ASRock Extreme4 Gen3) to Ivy Bridge was something I was planning to do this month, anyway. For Intel not to include Sandy Bridge, a chip only about 2 years old, in their driver development for 8.1 is pretty lame. A Microsoft suggestion was to reinstall the Intel video drivers with compatibility settings for Win 7 or 8, but that didn't work for me.

^^^^ THIS!!!! OMFG, why oh why today do I have no mod points.

Hmmm, I never thought of comparing Bryon to Eminem (with better rap, admittedly) before.

I didn't need that image. Thanks!

Does Portuguese not have a way to differentiate between America (short hand for U.S.A.) and Americas (shorthand for North, Central, and South America as a whole? In Spanish, for example, FIBA Americas is the name for Mexican-founded basketball league that covers all of the Americas. Although, to confuse things the American Baseball League allows those naughty Canadians to play as pretend Americans, it seems (well, they usually do get paid in USD, so why not).

When I started with Motorola in the mid/late '80s, the RISC processor called the 88100 was in the process of being released. It was a physical monstrosity compared to the MC68030 and prior, and consumed an outrageous 25 watts. I made a comment to one of the architects that they should have put it in a circular package instead of square one, and he went off about how incredibly wasteful that would be, how hard it would be to escape the signals, etc... before finally asking me why would I even consider that. I said, at 25 watts, it would make a much better coffee warmer than the 68030 (the 68030 was on the order of a 2.5W CPU, typically passively cooled).

I learned that day that some architects have very little sense of humor.

Later, talking to some Intel reps about the BTX specification that was in the planning stages, I suggested that they put a metal plate standing up from the motherboard in their spec, between the graphics card slot and the CPU. When asked why, I suggested it was so that in a tower case, a person could place their cookies or brownies on the plate to cook, given that their CPU was 25 watts over the 100W bulb used in an Easy Bake Oven (TM somebody, I forget) and with all the fans, the convection cooking capability could be wonderful. This discussion was going on as I was trying to convince them to let us (my employer at the time, Dell) produce a demonstration desktop computer around Yonah (mobile CPU, prior to Intel giving up on the P4 architecture, which was competitive with the P4 on integer benchmarks, but had relatively poor fp performance). Funny thing about that, they seemed more offended about my suggestion that a 'mobile' cpu architecture could be competitive in a desktop environment than their current desktop CPU offering could make every office smell like chocolate chip cookies every day. My, how the worm turned.

Postal Service Bank's log-in only works with IE (fails on Chrome and Firefox last I tested), but at least it works with IE8.

Perhaps they might be buggering you to practice their English, though...

It is for powers of 2.

I paid 2100 RMB (about 330 USD) for my HKC 2560x1440 27" monitor. Supports HDMI, DisplayPort, DVI, VGA (to get those, means they splurged on a video scaler), has audio input, and was pixel perfect. Color rendition is surprisingly good, far better than I anticipated, but that is only eyeballing it and not using a colorimeter. Oh, and has wonderfully crappy 2W speakers if you are into torturing your ears more than your eyes.

There was a brand called Sekei available with a 50" 4K TV on NewEgg not that long ago for... about $900, I think it was? I forgot to save a link to it, unfortunately, and I can't locate them now. Pity. I did find a link to info about the panel, though. Would be fun if it could actually do 120 Hz at 4K res, that is only for 1080P or lower.

Almost two hundred comments, and not one person has commented (that I saw) about how this might encourage engineers and users to start letting out the magic smoke on purpose.

Or maybe more like this magic smoke is REALLY magic.

Putting the magic in magic smoke.

etc...

* yes, I am quite aware that you are more likely to get cancer from putting your nose close to that super-cap when it blows than getting high, but the comment potential is still 'high'. *rimshot*

Dell was punished for just this (sale to a company who resold to an embargoed country) in the past. I got to watch the videos Dell employees were subjected to (kind of in the 'if you see something, say something' vein) and I wasn't on the business side, I was under the CTO umbrella. I seem to recall the punishment lasted 5 years and was blamed for a significant reduction in growth for those years. While I worked there, some of my interactions with the sales side of the house gave me the chance to watch the due diligence in progress, it seemed in-depth and comprehensive particularly with respect to dealings in the M.E..

If Dell is quickly found to be at fault this time around, it will be interesting to see how it affects the plan to go private. If it takes a while and the plan has already taken place, it could extend the time it takes them to do a new IPO from 3 or 4 years to 8 to never.

D'oh! Thanks!

I thought the .sx address was being blocked by the GFWoC, but apparently the DNS just hasn't propagated, because I can't access the new address from my USA based VPN, either, at this point.

  While trying to retrieve the URL: http://www.piratebay.sx/

The following error was encountered:

        Unable to determine IP address from host name for www.piratebay.sx

The dnsserver returned:

        Server Failure: The name server was unable to process this query.
his means that:

  The cache was not able to resolve the hostname presented in the URL.
  Check if the address is correct.

Your cache administrator is webmaster.
Generated Wed, 01 May 2013 05:48:57 GMT by google.com (squid/2.7.STABLE6)

I forgot how good the original Futurama series was. It's a pity there never were any Futurama movies.