Bravo, dear sir or madam. This is exactly how it should be done.

Well of course; when you use a controller, auto-aim is enabled. Console shooters have been doing this for a while. Some new pc games support this, too.

I'm pretty sure you have to pass a strict background check and pay a $200 fee, but I know it's possible. Same with silencers/suppressors. Otherwise, this man would be in jail by now.

The current school system in the US is a bloated government monopoly, indifferent to competing models of schooling. You pay for it through taxes whether you send your kids to public school, private school, or if you homeschool them (or even if you don't have kids at all). There are alternatives to public school in the US, but the government doesn't care. They get their money, even if you shell out for private school or quit your job to homeschool.

At the minimum, parents should receive vouchers equivalent in value to what the local public school system pays per pupil, vouchers that could be redeemed at private schools, or used for homeschooling expenses. This would put real pressure on crappy public schools to reform themselves or face starvation, unlike the misguided "No Child Left Behind Act".

Not too many people overclock, true. But I sure do; I found that a +20% overclock/overvolt on my aging Kentsfield CPU was well worth the +45% jump in peak power consumption, and it turns out Kentsfields really don't mind running at 80 degrees C under load. Framerates in Crysis 2 and L.A. Noire are playable now, and I didn't have to shell out for new cpu/mobo/ram. Oh and fwiw, it really pisses me off that you can't overclock low-end Intel CPUs anymore. I have fond memories of boosting my C2D e4300 from 1.8Ghz to 2.7Ghz. Props to AMD for unlocking the multipliers on basically all their CPUs these days.

However, a lot of people use cpu and especially gpu coolers with heatpipes, which is a liquid cooling of sorts. The "twin frozr" system MSI uses on my Radeon 7850 has heatpipes galore and keeps my card cool and quiet despite my overclocking.

Heatpipes were really a great idea, bringing many of the benefits of liquid cooling along in a compact, hassle-free package. No risk of leaks or water pumps failing, no need to construct a big radiator rack that requires a full-size or larger case...

Oh also, as awful as Netburst CPUs were (long execution pipeline? blech no thank you - I game...), I'd like to see someone overclock one to 10 Ghz for the lulz.

The Ferrari will attract gold-diggers, and the fancy computer will attract girls who like computers. I'll take the computer.

Also if anyone is considering buying a Ferrari, don't. I'd suggest buying two Corvettes and two walkie-talkies - one for you, one for a friend!

Dying from a heart-attack mid-flight over the ocean and being summarily ejected = coolest burial at sea ever.

Same here, pretty much. The security took way too long at McCarran Int'l last time I was there. Then the plane ride was uncomfortable, even for a little guy like me.

What we need is a new approach to passenger seating that takes into account security, comfort, and economy. How about this: Replace all the airline seats with padded tubes stacked like firewood (think Bruce Willis's trip to Phloston Paradise in The Fifth Element). Mix nitrous oxide in with the passenger tube's air to sedate them (I imagine it would be hard for a terrorist to hijack a plane while sedated). Safety procedure for an emergency landing is: you do nothing, because you're already limp (and therefore less likely to break bones) and you're wrapped in a giant padded burrito. Awesome. Maybe wake people up if you're ditching the plane in water, but otherwise, nah. Just eject their tubes a safe distance away from the aircraft upon landing.

Imagine boarding a plane in Los Angeles, lying down on a comfy pad, and then the next thing you know... you're waking up in New York, or Paris, or Moscow, hearing the local time and weather from the soothing, confident voice of a captain who you just *know* held an eight-hour orgy with the rest of the flight crew while everyone else was sedated.

Some people would throw up from the gas as they disembarked, sure, but that's a small price to pay. Plenty of people get airsick during turbulence and the airlines just give them a sack.

We have one in the US. It's called "Yucca Mountain". It's all ready to go, but Sen. Harry Reid put the kibosh on it, because he's an idiot who unfortunately holds a lot of sway in the senate.

What about seek times in a low-RPM, high-capacity drive?

I have two 3.5" drives in my desktop. One is a Western Digital 250GB 7200 RPM ATA/133 drive from 2005, the other is a Western Digital 5400 1TB 5400 RPM "green" SATA 3.0gbps drive from around 2011.

The 5400 RPM drive is nice and fast for big files, but lord help you if you install a game on it. Load times are easily twice as long for a big AAA game like Crysis.

I checked and both drives have three platters. Is this what's killing my 5400 RPM drive?

Here's what I want to know about Bitcoin: What happens when the last bitcoin is mined? I think there's a max of 21 million bitcoins, and currently about half that many have been mined and are in people's hands.

If bitcoin continues long enough to reach the end-game, wouldn't it create a deflationary spiral?

I think you're right on the money there. Apple re-invented itself; Dell will re-brand itself.

When Apple was in a slump it transformed from a computer company locked in a race to the bottom - fighting beige-box Mac clones with beige boxes of their own - into a design company that produces its own ecosystem of high-margin computers and online services (iTunes store, iOS / OS X app stores). Apple acknowledges this; "Apple Computer" is now just "Apple", officially.

I don't own a Macbook, and I don't want one, but I can totally understand why they're selling like hotcakes: elegant and sturdy design, luxury status, vertical integration of hardware / software / internet services, and now retina displays... the list goes on. Love them or hate them, but Apple's computers stand out.

Dell, on the other hand? They're still making cheap generic beige boxes, except these days they're "piano black". I'm sure that's exactly what their corporate/government customers want, but the question then is, "How do you re-invent yourself when your customers just want blade servers, cheap desktops, and on-site service plans?" Dell already does those things well.

I'm guessing that Dell's idea of "re-inventing itself" will be to buy Alienware again, or to imitate Apple. Hopefully, they'll try something none of us thought of and prove me wrong in the process.

Oblig. Homer Simpson quote: "And we can't watch FOX because they have those chemical weapons plants in Syria..."

Odds are you live in an area with a bad school zone problem. Or at least, you do if your city is anything like mine. In my area, school zones have a 25 mph speed limit ... ALL HOURS ALL DAYS. Kids are only crossing those streets for 2 hours a day max, and they have crossing guards to boot.

Monthly server costs can be pretty cheap, and for some games, you really do need a business-class server for smooth netplay. For example, I used to play a lot of Battlefield 2 - that's a game supporting up to 64 players (and that game only really came into its own with that many people playing). A lot of BF2 clans would have monthly membership dues to pay for server costs - I almost joined a couple of them, and they only wanted $8 per month from me. Considering that I played that game a good 100 hours a month back in 2006, it seemed like a pretty reasonable deal. However, I stopped playing that game when I realized my borderline obsession with it was screwing up my grades in school.

I saw the same thing back when AlterIW was offering a dedicated server alternative to the TERRIBLE matchmaking system in Modern Warfare 2.