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Comment Re:I dont get it (Score 1) 551

2) Russians can not rightfully claim anything if they are already inside Ukraine, threatening a base, and being fired upon within Ukraine. That is utter bullshit.

Well you see, those aren't Russian forces attacking the bases, they're Crimean Self Defense, and if Ukrainians start shooting, Russia would have to step in to protect the ethnically Russian population from the Nazi Ukrainian threat. This is more or less literally what I heard some Kremlin shill say in an interview yesterday.

Comment Re:Sounds like a whiner. (Score 0) 381

>Kurt Sutter seems to be a whiner

You have no idea! He's a bitter asshole who's constantly butthurt over his shitty show losing out critically to Justified, as actors have input on the making of that show, unlike his baby which is a pure reflection of his stupid vision. He goes on asinine rants and recruits actors from other shows only to kill them off in humiliating ways.

Comment Re:Isn't just the keyboards (Score 1) 459

Lenovo really got on my shit list withe the two latest generations of ThinkPads, and this is one of the primary reasons.

The T520 that I had up until it got stolen last Christmas was pretty much perfect - a 15" laptop with a centered keyboard, whose only deviation were oversized escape and delete keys. Excluding that, it was almost exactly the same as on my T61 and X32, and apparently all the way back to the ancient 700 series.

Yet in two generations, they
- Moved to island-style buttons (ok, but why?)
- Dropped the 7th row, and consequently had to
-- Bunch up all the F-keys together, making them more difficult to touch-type
-- Re-shuffle the former occupants, sticking them in stupid places and losing some completely
- Dropped the trackpad buttons
- Dropped the trackpoint buttons, making the whole trackpad act as a loud and awkward button
- Lost the dedicated mute/volume buttons.
- Removed the ThinkLight
- Added a fucking numpad, thus moving the keyboard off-center
- Move speakers god knows where

All this bullshit makes me much sadder about the loss of my dear T520, which otherwise would've been a good excuse for an upgrade.

Privacy

Employee Morale Is Suffering At the NSA 841

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Ellen Nakashima reports at the Washington Post that morale has taken a hit at the National Security Agency in the wake of controversy over the agency's surveillance activities and officials are dismayed that President Obama has not visited the agency to show his support. 'It is not clear whether or when Obama might travel the 23 miles up the Baltimore-Washington Parkway to visit Fort Meade, the NSA's headquarters in Maryland,' writes Nakashima, 'but agency employees are privately voicing frustration at what they perceive as White House ambivalence amid the pounding the agency has taken from critics.' Though Obama has asserted that the NSA's collection of virtually all Americans' phone records is lawful and has saved lives, the administration has not endorsed legislation that would codify it. And his recent statements suggest Obama thinks some of the NSA's activities should be constrained. 'The agency, from top to bottom, leadership to rank and file, feels that it is had no support from the White House even though it's been carrying out publicly approved intelligence missions,' says Joel Brenner, NSA inspector general from 2002 to 2006. 'They feel they've been hung out to dry, and they're right.' Former officials note how President George W. Bush paid a visit to the NSA in January 2006, in the wake of revelations by the New York Times that the agency engaged in a counterterrorism program of warrantless surveillance on U.S. soil beginning after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. 'Bush came out and spoke to the workforce, and the effect on morale was tremendous,' Brenner said. 'There's been nothing like that from this White House.' Morale is 'bad overall' says another former NSA official. 'It's become very public and very personal. Literally, neighbors are asking people, 'Why are you spying on Grandma?'"

Comment Re:Every year (Score 1) 453

Oh, no doubt. It's just that Nehalem was a bit too soon (and I was more broke then) and afterwards it just didn't seem that exciting - I thought I'd do it with Haswell, what with the TSX, AVX2 and what not, but then the -K series got crippled for differentiation reasons, and the heat issues, and overall focus on energy over performance and just... meh.

And while I'm sure the processor is limiting the graphics card somewhat, as far as I could tell, it's not that much.
Let's say my overclocked Q6600 is roughly as fast as the AMD A10-5800K (good job, AMD!):
http://anandtech.com/bench/product/675?vs=53
The A10, while being the slowest of the bunch, delivers just 10 fewer fps in Crysis than the 4770K:
http://techreport.com/review/24879/intel-core-i7-4770k-and-4950hq-haswell-processors-reviewed/9
yeah it's worse in the worst case but again, just meh.

But I am going to do it next year for sure, so I hope Nvidia is working hard on Maxwell as well!

Comment Re:Every year (Score 1) 453

Haswell significantly reduced the power consumption and improved graphics performance, so that Joe Blow can read My Spacebook for longer and have higher framerate in Tankville or whatever.

But yeah, in general progress has been quite disappointing recently. My desktop PC is still a Q6600 based machine which is what, 2-3 time slower at raw computing than top of the line i7 even in SIMD-heavy apps, and that's at stock speeds. I overclocked it a bit and with a mid-range GTX650 Ti Boost it runs Crysis 3 at high settings at >40 fps in all but a few locations at 1080p (which is better than what the Xbone can manage, apparently). All of which doesn't sound too bad, but my CPU is almost 7 years old now, for fuck's sake!

With each of the past several CPU generations I've been meaning to upgrade, only to come to the conclusion that another 5-10% of improvement just wasn't worth it. C'mon Intel, don't mess up with Broadwell now, I'm counting on you! I've been rational/cheap for too long and want shiny new things!

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