[Spoiler]

Spoiler for Hiden:

I thought the main point of the book was that Ender didn't know that they were actually fighting the aliens, that they were all just training/simulations? I guess it seems like they all know what they are doing.

Bottle neck in what way? If you have a gigabit switch then the max you can network everything is up to a gigabit. Wireless N in a perfect situation would probably get you up to 300-500 Mbs. But it's never going to be a perfect situation. You have everyone elses networks creating noise, walls block the signal and generally every little thing sucks out bandwidth from wireless routers I would say you are lucky getting 100 to the places you want. I have my wireless router in my office which is probably 20-30 feet away from my Roku box in my master bedroom anything HD and I get constant buffering.

MIchael Bay shoud apologize for being Michael Bay.

My only thing with Kickstarter is that I'm not sure what amount you would be throwing out there. Enough to run the servers for a month? Or would you go for a year. The people on the forums are a dedicated bunch and I'm sure you'll get some money out of it but would people on the front page be willing to donate? I'm sure they are mostly people that bounced here from Metacritic or something, not sure if they are the donating types.

About the only thing I /really/ download any more is anime, but I still buy box sets of things periodically. 

Depending on what anime you watch Crunchyroll/Funimation (Now that they are finally fucking working) on a Roku work rather well.

The other thing the article brought up is that the same comic is sold through the iBookStore. So why is the app store more curated/censored?

Software/Firmware Engineer for Bally Technologies.

I make slot machines....

I found this in my G+ Stream and am not surprised.

http://www.geek.com/articles/games/modder-proves-simcity-can-run-offline-indefinitely-20130314/

Since we are also looking for a fridge we settled on:

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-RF4287-Refrigerator-Integrated-Stainless/dp/B003M5L284/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1363191471&sr=8-2&keywords=samsung+fridge

The first review really kind of says what I've found out about looking for appliances in general. We decided on that for the extra drawer fridge thinger.

I know I'm insane to be considering this but my friend from work has one of these:



http://www.dakotagrills.com/

But the stuff that he has made is fucking amazing. And it seems so much easier. The only thing that I think won't work the best are burgers.

You already have the indoor version. It's called an oven. :-)

Oven isn't also a smoker.

I know I'm insane to be considering this but my friend from work has one of these:



http://www.dakotagrills.com/

But the stuff that he has made is fucking amazing. And it seems so much easier. The only thing that I think won't work the best are burgers.

Carrie Fisher is in

Gustav Holst would be intrigued by this.

I think people don't like it because it's EA.

That's exactly why people don't like/trust Origin.

Yep. That and it just isn't as intuitive/easy as Steam. All my friends are also on Steam.

How noisy is it? I assume it has a fan of some sort.

Side note:  Kudos for having each front page article show up in Facebook feeds.  I don't typically check the front page (I don't keep up with gaming news in general these days). For some reason though, seeing some of the articles pop up on FB gets me to click on them.  I've probably looked at more GT articles in the past couple weeks than I did in the past few months.

Same here with me and twitter when I see a GT post that looks interesting in there and bounce over to the main page and read it. I would probably do more with Google+ Though since I've pretty much gravitated toward just using that.

Does the front loader on the second floor vibrate the floor? Or if you balance it right it's okay?

So we bought a new house. It will be finished around March so I have begun the now amazingly fun task of finding appliances.

Washer:

The laundry room is on the second floor. We have been using an agitator washer for the past several years and my wife does not want an agitator washer anymore. So that leaves me with the two options of HE Top load or a front load washer. Which one is better? I've heard HE Top loads can ruin clothes. Front load washers can apparently smell bad and have vibration issues. What brands are good in this area? Everywhere I've looked I keep getting mixed reviews on every single washer I look at. So far one of the top is the Maytag Bravos XL.

Dryer:

I've pretty much just relented myself to getting whatever matching one comes with the washer.


Fridge:

I'm leaning more towards the french door with the freezer on the bottom. Most of the issues I've read have to deal with the icemaker/water dispenser. Would a side by side be better though in this regard? One problem is that I haven't gotten an exact measurement of the space, I would assume it is a semi standard space for a fridge so I am hoping 33/36 inch space in the cabinets for the fridge.

Anyone I'm just looking for what people have used and what they like.

I don't go to the theatres a whole lot, and I don't buy DVDs/Blu-Rays so what would interest me the most:

Will the movie be on:

Amazon Instant
Netflix Streaming
Vudu
Epix

If so when will it show up on there?

Could this also be branch into television shows?

Right now I know of no good way to tell what will be on what when. Since everything is so split up and generally crappy, some sort of aggrate of the streamings options would be great.

I really don't know how feasible that is but it would be awesome.

Tesla Model S Performance.  Though I don't really need that... I'd be perfectly happy with a Model S 85kWH.

This. Absolutely this.

Yeah, I watched this Tested test drive and it helped me start to see I needed one as well. 

Yep.

So somehow spiders in Australia get bigger in urban areas.

Only in Australia do giant spiders get bigger.

I'm only angry in that it probably should of been a Scottish joke instead of an Arab joke.

If space is an issue sound bars from what I understand are good. But they will never replace a good 5.1 sound system with a dedicated sub.

With unlimited internet I just stream it all the time. My commute has little to no dropouts so I'm usually good to and from work every day. So I really have no need for any space on my phone unless I'm going on a trip then I just download a playlist on spotify and I'm good to go.  I have 16 gigs on my phone and a 16 gig SD card in it and I use maybe 2 gigs of it.

Okay, so the general consensus from here at least is that it's a crapshoot kind of as with anything with insurance. Guess I'll try USAA and see how much I save by bundling since I have my car insurance through usaa. If not I'll look around.

I'm so lost with this new thread.

This is heavy...

Not really.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d68yRIE9OvQ

So I am buying a house and I need to look at insurance stuff now. I honestly have no idea who to go with. All the research I do says this company or that company constantly weasels out of paying claims, also that apparently filing claims is bad? What's the point of having insurance then...

Has anyone had actual good experience with the claim process and so forth with homeowners insurance?

Touchstone Pictures is owned by Disney and they've done R rated films. We will also see what happens Marvel since all the movies that have come out were already in production before Disney bought out Marvel. The next batch I believe is post Disney. Disney can do dark films, but it really all comes down to who they choose to direct the sequels for Star Wars. It's interesting so we'll just have to see what happens.

It's hard to make it any worse than Lucas has done with the films.

After DA2 and Mass Effect 3 I won't be pre-ordering another Bioware game.

My cheeto encrusted atheist fingers are typing up a long worded angry reply that I have written a script to spam all the religious forums that I've seen.


Just you wait.

I have 16gig with a 16gig SD card in my galaxy s2 and really....I only need 16gig, I could get away with 8 even. Everything I listen to or watch, I stream. Maybe if I flew or traveled a lot more I would save off playlists from Spotify or something. If you do a lot of heavy games maybe.

I had an iPhone 3G for year or so, then I went with an Android phone. I can't go back to to iPhone now. I have an iPad and I hate having to go into apps to do anything. Whereas with widgets and the notification bar giving me all the info I need. Now I only hit certain apps if I want to do something more specific. That and being able to customize just about everything with my phone. I also agree with several articles out there about the inconsistencies with Android. It is annoying that the back button can mean totally different things in different apps. I think Google is pushing hard to fix some of those things though. That and you also have 200 trillion phones that are "Android" but with extra shit piled on top of it. I bought a Galaxy S2 this go around and I think from this experience I will only get Nexus devices now.

Anyway I can never go back to an iPhone, I hate the "grid" and I don't like not being able to mess with the phone. Jailbreaking only gets you so far and more often than not it slows down the phone and causes other issues. I like how I can have mutliple homescreens devoted to certain things, I can have a screen that is the full gmail widget that I resized to fit the homescreen, another one for g+ and another one that can be a gallery/music player. So I can just swipe screens instead of bouncing between apps.

As for the app store, it's hard to compete against Apples App store, the Play Store isn't really close, I'm sure you can find the same apps but they might not be as good as the iPhone version. That and you get cut off from a lot of really cool games, namely Infinity Blade of GOF2. There are some good games like Strikefleet Omega. Also I'm sure since Android is overtaking iPhone in general there will be more and more games that are going to have to switch to it.

I guess it breaks down to this:

If you use iTunes and Apple stuff for a lot of things, want a truly consistent experience through and through then probably stick with iPhone.
If you use GMail and google services,  like messing with your phone and more customizeation options go Android.

Can't really comment on Windows Phone.

Obama seemed sick or something.  He looked down so much it was eerie.

He looked tired and drained.  His mind was elsewhere.  It was strange to watch.  Romney was in full steamroll mode, which made the contrast even more noticeable.

He was probably tired from his Jay-Z, Beyonce, and other Hollywood parties.   I sure as hell know he wasn't tired from the Libya incident, through which he slept like a baby.

Just wow to that one.

It's more along the lines that McFarlane isn't one to shy away from his opinions, figured he could do something similar to what Ricky Gervais did.

I have a feeling he won't be invited back.

Was your iPod touch on iOS 6? I wasn't sure if you could restore a backup from a previous version of the OS. But it's been awhile since my iPhone.

You surely mean Aporkalypse?

(I cant take credit for it, but it's too funny to pass up writing it here!)

Damnit, now I'll see this on the news. If I watched the news.

I've also had a friend like that. We'll invite him out and have to push him to actually do it. Or he'll spontaneously show up, but most of the time he'll drop what we are doing for something else. Just got to the point that we would invite him and he either would show up or not but we just didn't count on him anymore.