An accelerometer doesn't measure speed but acceleration, if it was moving on earth at a perfectly constant pace (and perfectly smoothly) the accelerometer would likewise not measure anything, right?

(whooosh

Karnal's point about if I can afford a dedicated rig + buy AAA titles when they come out, I can afford a bigger SSD is completely valid - the key there was if. I do have a(n older) dedicated rig, but I don't buy games until they hit a Steam sale for the very reasons (most of them, I am still married) you mentioned above. I was not weighing in an opinion because I am annoyed about how I'm going to install the game today, but if I ever do nab it on a sale (I think it's Origin only, so I likely will never play this particular title), it will be a PITA. My complaint was only about the short-sightedness of the developer delivering an inferior (quantifiably) product to pander lo low-end machines when they could have easily offered an option, or just had the user download the language(s) they wanted to use. As is, I replied in a rush and several people (rightfully) called me out on my incomplete thought :)

That's a fair statement, I did over-state my point - most gamers (not people that casually play some games on a computer they happen to own, but people that built a box specifically for gaming - my rig is nothing to brag about at 3.5 years old, but it does have a decent video card & modest SSD) I know do not have abundant space *for games* as they are loading their OS & games off SSD while using the HDD for media. At 48GB, it is 3 times the size of my next largest game and the reason isn't because it is better, it is because they didn't compress their audio.

Anyway, your point was perfectly valid and I should have chosen my words better :)

I have a HDD too, my point was it is slower loading off the HDD than the SSD & it isn't big because it is super-awesome, it is big because they wanted to market a new game to older systems but didn't want to take the absolutely trivial steps to have uncompressed as an option for decent spec'd rigs (or even have you only download/install the languages you want) rather than make everyone dedicate an obscene amount of space to one game. It's just sloppy.

Spoken like a non-gamer. My space on my SSD is my bottleneck, why should I have to use a slower HDD just because MS thinks gaming rigs are slow?

This is my quote of the day. I wish you hadn't posted AC.

The number of unrecovered black boxes is pretty damn low: in the past 25 years, only one airplane's recorders were lost. The rest were either destroyed in the crash, or deliberately not recovered.

Only as a whole. All congressmen suck except for mine* - he's the only one who is fighting for the little guy.



*regardless of who I am or who my congressman is

Hard to beat, sure. Impossible, no. PagePlus (VZW MVNO) has $80/yr for 2000 minutes (had it for a year, only dropped it because I wanted a GSM phone).

Airvoice is $30/mo, no taxes/fees, unlimited voice & text, 500MB data. You can spend a little more to not get data (as shown above), but this is the plan my wife has & is great. Any unlocked GSM phone will work, they are an ATT MVNO.

At that level of usage, you might look at Page Plus (VZW MVNO); I pay $10 3 times a year for (each of) my kids' phones. It's 10c/min but no additional taxes (there is a 50c deduction per month service fee), so they basically get 20min/mo with roll-over. Not sure it would be any better for you, but the coverage is great (statistically) and I think it's always worth looking at options.

You can use any post-paid VZW phone except the iPhone (last I checked, they might be able to use the iPhone now, doesn't affect me). They also have an $80/yr 2000min plan that amounts to 4c/min (and under $7/mo) which I used to use - a great deal!

I pay $13.99/mo (no taxes/fees). $10/mo to ATT MVNO Airvoice for 250min/mo with rollover (which I never come close to using all of), Google Voice for all my SMS (unlimited) and the rare times I'm not on WIFI I have a $3.99/mo Freedompop 3g/4g Mifi (free if only 4g but Wimax coverage is spotty so I pay for 3g). The Mifi is only 1GB/mo, but like I said, it's rare I'm on in WIFI coverage anyway.

It's not for everyone, but it's great for me.

I'm sure a "very clear explanation" is given, but I'm not going to read something that presents it to me at a rate of one sentence per page.

The author is correct, but he expressed it in a very awkward way: below Wanapum Dam is Priest Rapids Dam, and below that is the Hanford Reach, a free-flowing section of the river. If Wanapum fails, the Priest Rapids reservoir needs to absorb the entire flood; releasing it will cause flooding in the Hanford area.