Cutts

"Raise the amount of cunt..." LMAO... I'm in favour of that use of budget! Also... the genius of telling a Dali Lama joke to the Dali Lama!

I either spend all my time crosseyed if its bad, or marvelling at it if its good, that I don't pay attention to the actual plot!

I hate it, because I can't buy it yet. When will it be mine?

Well, so if its not a dust buildup problem, I'm not sure what else it might be really. I don't know enough about your specific hardware to make any insightful suggestions I'm afraid, but I can give you a few general tips. Your case looks better than average, so should have enough airflow. Do you have a high ambient room temperature? It could just be that on a warm day, your cooling isn't sufficient, when its fine on a colder day. One thing... how many fans does that case have, and are they setup properly? Ideally you need both intake and exhaust fans, and they should be setup to work together (eg, don't put an intake right next to an exhaust, but put them on opposite ends of the case, to get air flowing smoothly). I once bought a case with this problem, so I had to unscrew some of the fans, and bolt them on the other way round, on the outside of the case (they only had screw holes on one side). It looked ugly, but it worked like a charm afterwards. Stock cooling *should* be alright if you're not overclocking, in theory, but I would never recommend it. I would suggest buying a new heatsink + fan unit for your CPU even if you were not overheating, and carefully replacing the stock one... you'll want to have a look around for the right one though... there are generally hundreds of them available and some of them are completely useless. This seems a reasonably priced one, with a high level of consumer confidence... not the best, but if you're not overclocking it should be enough, and I can also personally recommend Coolermaster products, as I use something similar. Although... do make sure to check the dimensions of these things first, as they can be simply massive; I made this mistake once and my cooler was too big for my case! As McDowell says, you'll want a good thermal paste... I use Arctic Silver 5, but I think McDowells suggestion of Arctic Cooling MX-4 is better. (Note: If you've not used thermal paste before you need to be a little bit careful... ideally you want the smallest amount you can, whilst still covering the surface. The arctic silver guys have a good bit of detailed information about this here, but the basic idea is is to squeeze out a blob and spread it very thinly with a plastic card or a razor blade.) One general tip for building PCs, is to keep everything hot as far away from everything else as you can. Easier said than done, given that most motherboards only have one slot for the two hottest components, but generally, keep all your PCI/PCI-x boards as far away from your GPU as possible, and use rounded cables, with cable ties, to keep your cabling as far from the CPU and GPU as possible.

What Lafy and Holland said! Also a few quick questions... 1) Is it a desktop/laptop? 2) What make/model of motherboard / CPU? 3) How long had you been running it / playing games? It is most commonly a build-up of dust that causes this sort of thing, and carefully cleaning your CPU heatsink and fan would fix that. I generally recommend getting inside a desktop PC every 6 months at least, and vacuuming out all the cobwebs. Your CPU is probably still fine though... most hardware these days have automatic system to reduce the voltage as soon as a certain temperature is exceeded, before any real damage can be done (though they sometimes don't work fast enough). If its a laptop, you probably shouldn't open it up yourself, as that will likely void any warrenty, but again its probably dusty. Depending on the manufacturer (and how old it is) they may provide you with free servicing, which would generally clean out all the crap. I got a free new GPU for my Dell (UK) laptop over 2 years after I bought it, as the GPU fan had died and it overheated, so its possible to get quite lucky with them... I have no idea what Dell is like outside of the UK though.

Another bit of classic TV that I think you might like... "Yes, Minister" and "Yes, Prime Minister" Both are basically the same show, they just renamed the last few series because the protagonist got the top job. Political satire at its best, and a lot of it is still very relevant today, even though it was made in the 1980's. 1st episode of Yes, Prime Minister, looking at Britain's Trident nuclear deterrent. A couple of clips:

"Luverly Jubilee!" - Derek Edward Trotter.

Cool! Good to hear its resolved... probably. I had a recurring issue with my old machine where my RAID pair of hdds would just not show up when the machine booted, about 10% of the time. Simply rebooting would normally fix it... googling it, most people suggested I needed new firmware, but I never managed to find one that fixed my issue, but I had a fairly good workaround so I never needed to. So, it might be an issue that pops up again for you, but hopefully not! Let us know if it does - it might be a known issue fixed by a recent firmware update.

Bryant is quite right there. First thing to do is check things are firmly plugged in... the number of times this has caused me an issue is uncountable! 2 other generally helpful things to do when your HDD appears to have died: 1) Do you see in the BIOS? You will want to look in the BIOS settings to see what it reports. This will depend on your motherboard, generally. Normally you would press and hold "Del" at the beginning of startup (when the memory checks are happening) and this will take you into your BIOS settings. Then navigate the menus to see if it is registering the SATA device... if you see the right number of HDDs there, then at least something is working correctly! If the BIOS or SATA controller doesn't report its presence, most likely you have faulty hardware (it could be a firmware fault, but since it worked before this is unlikely). 2) Does it work in another machine? The next best thing to do, is to carefully remove the drive and install it into another machine, that you know has a fully working motherboard and SATA controller. This assumes you have a spare machine somewhere around, or a friend who's willing to let you mess with theirs! If it still doesn't work, you probably have a faulty disk, but if it does work, then the fault is likely to lie with your new motherboard. (Note: a lot of this is manufacturer dependent, so might not be as straight-forward as I have described... some SATA controllers have their own menu system that can be activated after the BIOS startup, so you might find what you need there) If these don't help, could you post the make/model of both your motherboard and HDD, and also the version of the BIOS firmware that you are currently using and maybe that will shed some light on it? One more question, are you absolutely certain you (or your little brother, if you have one) didn't change anything? I can't really think of anything other than altering BIOS settings and firmware that would stop a functional HDD from working, these days (unless it is actually broken).

I still don't really understand that there are people who exist, who were born in the fucking 1990's, and they're apparently adults now. What the fuck happened to all the time?

I particularly like "Which one of you bitches... wants to dance?"

Some questions... 1) Is this company of heroes? 2) Also, which version of it are you playing? 3) And, hasn't this game been about for years? 4) Am I going to have to install it again?

Lynn.... these are SEX PEOPLE!

DAN! DAN! DAAAN! ...he's not heard me...... DAAAAAN!

Heheh... yes, some good stuff there. I particularly like Green Wing and Peep Show May I recommend the following comedy: Black Books is great... heres is the first episode! (a drunk Irishman runs an independent book store, angrily)(first episode linked) Yeah, IT Crowd, The Office (I particularly like it because Slough is only 30 minutes away from me... although the US version is really good aswell) Here is a very amusing poem about Slough Here's a list of stuff from a group of comedians I really like. It's pretty out there, in many ways. Warning, 1,2 and 5 have all been made by a guy who tends to be as offensive as he can be. He's almost unemployable these days, because he winds up TV executives. He hid a subliminal message about Michael Grade, controller of Channel 4 at the time, saying "Grade is a cunt". And then he phoned the Daily Mail (a newspaper that loves to hate him) and 'anonymously' informed them, just in case no-one noticed! 1) The Day Today (the original spoof news) In this clip, presenter Chris Morris manages to turn an historic trade agreement into war, in 3 minutes! 2) Brass Eye (sort-of follow up to The Day Today) 3) Knowing Me, Knowing You, with Alan Partridge (a spoof chat show, with a completely inept and inane host) 4) I'm Alan Partridge (a sitcom featuring Partidge after he's lost his TV job and is blundering through his pathetic life) In this episode, Alan greviously insults a South African, before greiviously injuring himself. 5) Jam, or Jaaaaaam (totally fucked up sketches... Jaaaaam is the same as Jam, but broadcast later, with slightly more trippy visual effects and slow motion)

I did actually consider whether it would be possible. Outside of the fridge, however, they're very fragile and crumbly, so I doubt they would last in transit. I'd be sending you a box of individual chocolate krispies, interleaved with bits of paper.

I have made more... this time they're even more chocolatey, and they've got raisins in. Jealous? Yeah. You're jealous.

Traktor looks badass... I'll have to check it out. I'd like something new to play with! I think there is a trial version of sony acid which can be upgraded if required... Another really great tool for making tracks is Reason. The main thing about it is, its just so simple and fun to use, at the same time as being extremely powerful and productive. It can also be "rewired" into other tools to make it work with other high end software. Again, its not free (around 400 euro, for the software and a massive bank of sounds), but it is both excellent and entertaining, and I cannot recommend it more highly. I have an earlier version and its one of my favourite toys.

Not bad... I very much like the selection of tracks, although in a couple of places the beat matching is a little wonky. Since you're mixing in software, can I recommend "Sony Acid"? It has a brilliant tool which allows you to precisely map a tune to its own beat, and then it syncs them up for you... its so easy its almost cheating. 1st, you locate the first downbeat. 2nd, you drag out the first bar, from that beat. 3rd, it intelligently extrapolates out all the other bars. 4th, you go through those extrapolated bars, adjusting where its out of time, and it re-extrapolates. Then once you've done that with every tune you wish to mix, you simply drag the tunes to their own lane, set the tempo you wish it to play at, and every tune is timestretched/compressed into that tempo, perfectly. Note - this isn't a tool for performance, really... only for studio work... but the results are quite convincing. Its not free, unfortunately (though I'm certain its easy enough to warez from somewhere if you're into that). Because of its awesome beat matching, you can do some quite fast tempo changes, without either of the songs going out of time. You can make them quite jarring, but it'll always be in time. You can easily make use of pitch shifting aswell, shifting stuff up by semi-tones whilst keeping the same tempo, to make melodies fit together more naturally. I have provided a modest example here... its mostly chilled beats with euphoric electro synths, plus some fun weird stuff to break it up a bit, and features a few transitions where the tempo change is noticable but it all stays in time (basically). Turn it up!

I mean that the spelling mistake doesn't naturally result in the reader misinterpreting the intended word, as the only possible intended meaning of deterrant is deterrent. As opposed to those spelling mistakes which result in a totally different word which results in the whole meaning of the sentence changing. For example, if I'd accidentally said "deodorant", that'd make no sense (although the sentences might be a little bit more amusing that way).

Heheheh... OK... high quality debate, for the most part. Except, I would like to point out that dismissing someones argument on basis of a single (admittedly systematically egregious) unambiguous spelling error is a very weak position to take. But then you already know that!

I'm equating them in terms of the detterant value of the death penalty: 1) If you don't believe that you will get caught, then the death penalty is not a deterrant. 2) If you think that even if you do get caught you won't get the death penalty, then the death penalty is not a deterrant. Therefore they are essentially equivalent in this context (the context being whether the death penalty is a deterrant, and not what the courts think about it afterwards). Possibly I used an ambiguous word, with "spontaneous"... I mean it in terms of the opposite of premeditation. Eg, where there is no plan to kill in advance, but a situation evolves quickly and the perpetrator finds themselves making a spur-of-the-moment decision to kill. I'm making no claims regarding justifiablity. I'm not saying that heat of passion is a valid defense. I have carefully avoided using legal definitions of 1st/2nd/3rd degree murder / manslaughter, as I'm not making a legal point at all. My point is purely psychological: I'm simply saying, when you're making a split second decision to kill someone, you do not have time to weigh up your chances of recieving the death penalty, so in such cases its irrelevant as a deterrant.

I don't think that those two groups are particularly subjective; either a murder was premeditated or it wasn't. That seems to me to be both obvious and unchallengable. I agree that my analysis is a generalisation, and hense a specific counter-example can be found. Such counter examples are only interesting because of the unusuallness of the case, but aren't representative of the majority of crimes. In the Roper vs Simmons case, it was obviously premeditated. I would argue that "belief that you will not be prosecuted because you're a minor" is essentially equivalent to "belief that you will not be caught"; since he had already ruled out the death penalty from applying to himself and his friends, it seems that it did NOT act as a deterant in this case. The specific example you chose actually serves to better illustrate my point.

Totally this. There are two types of murder... premeditated, and spontaneous. The spontaneous ones happen when otherwise reasonable people get suddenly enraged and kill... at no point does the threat of the death penalty play any part in the mind of such a perpetrator, until the fog of rage has cleared and the deed done. The premeditated ones happen when a scheming bastard decides to kill in cold blood... generally they don't think they're going to get caught, so again the death penalty doesn't enter into it. As far as I see it, the death penalty serves no purpose as a deterant, and is only a punitive measure (and not a very good one, since death ends any suffering you might have "enjoyed" in jail).