Little things that annoy the hell out of you

[xbl0x180]

You would think that works, but anyone can drive without a license, with a revoked license, or with a DUI on their record

[Skykid]

If Americans can't stop shooting people, logic suggests they shouldn't have a right to bear arms.

Are you insinuating that all Americans just shoot each other with guns? Is that what you've learned about America from Britain? I can assure you that is completely false.

Nah, it wasn't in the literal like that. I just took njiska's statistics and put forth the argument that, if your shootings vastly outnumber any other nation on earth, then it's perhaps as njiska said: something in the water, so to speak, and therefore would be make logical sense to disarm.

To pick up on your other point, yes, there is a stereotype assumed by most foreign countries that America is a relatively dangerous place, based on its gun crime, primarily.

[BulletMagnet]

You would think that works, but anyone can drive without a license, with a revoked license, or with a DUI on their record

Yeah, but if you're caught doing that they can put you in jail for it no matter where you are; if a nutcase gets ahold of an assault rifle in a state with lax laws he can just belch out "Second Amendment" and nobody can do a thing to him until he kills someone.

[xbl0x180]

You would think that works, but anyone can drive without a license, with a revoked license, or with a DUI on their record

Yeah, but if you're caught doing that they can put you in jail for it no matter where you are; if a nutcase gets ahold of an assault rifle in a state with lax laws he can just belch out "Second Amendment" and nobody can do a thing to him until he kills someone.

Then, the problem would be in detecting mental cases. I agree that the U.S. mental health system is worse than a 3rd world country's

[BulletMagnet]

I'd say an equal if not larger problem is the fact that the NRA insists that even people on terrorist watch lists shouldn't be prohibited from buying as many guns as they want and carrying them wherever they please.

[Specineff]

Maybe it's because English is your second language and you don't possess enough reading comprehension to understand stuff. The only point I have been making is the fact that illegal immigrants are taking away jobs, unlike the general/ignorant comment you've made that they are not.

I said that I wasn't going to argue that point, darling. In fact, I did acknowledge it. Perhaps you'd have noticed it by reading my post before rushing to fire ad-hominems (Nice try and fail.)

And why wouldn't a salesman with years of experience not take a job flipping burgers?Hey, if it actually paid decent wages and benefits, it might be better than unemployment. But, see, since there's the alternative of hiring Mexican peasants, why would these jobs be taken by anyone else? I don't give a damn about the 99-cent burger if it means we have to live in the gang-infested, crime-ridden squalor they create wherever they go (hell, just look at how Mexico City was transformed by the same people in the 70s and 80s).

You probably mean to ask "Why wouldn't a salesman with years of experience take a job flipping burgers" if you want to imply that it's a good option compared to unemployment. There was a double negative there. (Was going to make an assholish comment here, but nah.)

Did you live in Mexico city at some point in the 80's? Because I did (Coyoacan side of the city, if you doubt me). Can you provide proof of your claim? Also, can you do it without having to rely on stereotypical assumptions? Because I currently live in a place with a relatively-high incidence of hispanic/mexican neighbors and I have yet to see the gang-infested, crime-ridden squalor that they seemingly forgot to bring along when they moved here. Not saying it doesn't happen, but correlation does not equal causation.

Whatever choice that salesman makes, is his. But chew on this: While I was working as a coordinator for a cleaning company in the mid-2000's (the one I mentioned I cleaned toilets for), I did scout for people who'd do it at a decent wage, with benefits. (I was able to make a living for two years, and had health insurance, so I'd say that qualifies). Not a single bite beyond people from other countries, with papers all right. So, you tell me why those US Citizens who are "losing" jobs because of the illegals weren't taking that kind of jobs? They were there for the taking, so your argument about the wage and someone snatching them first is invalid. The job wasn't only cleaning toilets, by the way. And I'm NOT defending illegals, before you make that assumption. It's not something I can fix. What I'm attacking is the assumption that people without papers taking low-skill jobs are the cause of people with high-skill jobs losing them or not getting hired for those jobs. Because if that was the case, then an illegal alien would have been hired in my place at a lower wage already, or even prior to me applying at my current job. Or all the entry and mid-level positions I held before working here. The reason I'm tired of it, is because I get painted with the same broad stroke just by appearance.

A "99-cent burger" costs A HELL OF A LOT MORE

Never disputed that. In fact, that's exactly the point I was getting at. So, I ask again. Please, prove (and I say "prove", not "tell me what you think is happening") to me that illegal aliens taking those low-level jobs are to blame for absolutely everyone else not having employment, like you seem to imply. They're not innocent, but not all the blame is theirs.

[greg]

those criminals.

uneducated/illiterate, low-skilled peasants

anchor babies

Mexican gypsies

Maybe it's because English is your second language and you don't possess enough reading comprehension to understand stuff.

if it means we have to live in the gang-infested, crime-ridden squalor they create wherever they go

You know, I can't tell whether you're a bigot or just a retarded asshole, but your obvious hatred towards Mexicans and your over-reliance of that moronic sunglasses emoticon leads me to think it's a combination of both. (But didn't you once say that you Hispanic yourself?) Don't accuse Spec of not possessing enough reading comprehension to understand stuff, when his writing level is far superior to the majority of Americans on the Net (and people on the shmups forum too), who don't even know that it's "could've" and not "could of" and are too stupid to know the difference between their, there, and they're. That is a total ad hominem attack just because you disagree with him, and all you use to support your argument is racist stereotyping and those idiotic sunglass smileys.

[xbl0x180]

greg, you're an imbecile and a simpleton who gets upset over the purposeful misspelling of the word "anime." To discuss anything with a spaz such as yourself would be an exercise in futility

[trap15]

You know, I can't tell whether you're a bigot or just a retarded asshole, but your obvious hatred towards Mexicans and your over-reliance of that moronic sunglasses emoticon leads me to think it's a combination of both. (But didn't you once say that you Hispanic yourself?) Don't accuse Spec of not possessing enough reading comprehension to understand stuff, when his writing level is far superior to the majority of Americans on the Net (and people on the shmups forum too), who don't even know that it's "could've" and not "could of" and are too stupid to know the difference between their, there, and they're. That is a total ad hominem attack just because you disagree with him, and all you use to support your argument is racist stereotyping and those idiotic sunglass smileys.

+1

[greg]

greg, you're an imbecile and a simpleton who gets upset over the purposeful misspelling of the word "anime." To discuss anything with a spaz such as yourself would be an exercise in futility

There you go with another ad hominem attack and more of that stupid sunglass bullshit in a lame attempt to disguise the fact that your argument is weak, and that you're a bigot. Good job.

[drauch]

This is getting awesome.

[BulletMagnet]

This is getting awesome.

Quoted for untruth: take the personal attacks to PM.

[Ex-Cyber]

Mainstream laptops having about the same number of pixels on a 13-15-inch screen as mainstream cell phones and tablets have on a 5-7-inch screen. Apparently it's even too much to ask that a 15" screen bumps up to 1440x900 or higher unless you order a custom build or buy a MacBook Pro with Retina Display [TM]. Or an Ultrabook [TM] (in which case you trade a good CPU for a good display, because Thin Is In; blergh.)

I had a clunky no-name CRT monitor that could (with some coaxing) do 1280x1024 15+ years ago. A ca. 1984 NEC MultiSync could do 800x600 if you pushed it a touch beyond spec. We can apparently ship 1,000,000,000 transistors in a CPU/GPU/APU, but somehow can't handle over 1,000 lines of screen without it being an ultra-premium boutique product. Pardon me if I'm slightly incredulous.

[Ed Oscuro]

That probably has something to do with acceptable failure rates in the shipped devices, or with the comparative reliability of different technologies, possibly both.

Even a large CPU is small enough that if there are flaws in it, it can be tossed with little problem (and some current designs just get repurposed as another SKU, with one less core for example). A screen is much bigger, and additionally I don't believe most LCD screens can be repurposed if they fail to meet standards. To make flawless LCD screens in bulk appears more difficult, too; manufacturers seem to be regularly pushing out panels with dead or stuck subpixels (and this has been going on for a long while, of course) and hoping they will not bother or be noticed by users. Over time, LCD screen pixels can fail, too; the technology behind LCD screens is far less dependable than that of CPUs.

[Ed Oscuro]

No one seems to care about why these shootings happened, they just assume they never would if there were no guns.

Careful, now: Why shouldn't they assume that? Logically, that assumption is internally consistent. If A then B, there are no As: therefore, there are no Bs.

Now, whether that is consistent with reality is what you should focus on.

[Ed Oscuro]

********* FUCK I HATE MY RAZER MOUSE DRIVER

[trap15]

Careful, now: Why shouldn't they assume that? Logically, that assumption is internally consistent. If A then B, there are no As: therefore, there are no Bs.

[BPzeBanshee]

The normal cable you get from your Xbox 360.

Apparently you can only get rid of the black bars that appear on 16:9 games by upgrading to a VGA cable or some bullshit. WTF? The Wii has no problems with 16:9 via it. That shit makes no sense to anyone who's not a TV tech-head of 2012.

The only alternative cable I could find for the 360 was the VGA cable but that certainly won't fit on the CRT in my room and I'm not sure about it fitting in any of the flatscreens in my room. I hate not knowing this kind of shit.

[trap15]

The way the Wii does "16:9" is a total hack. It renders the screen in 16:9, then horizontally compresses it to 4:3 and sends it over the cable. Your TV then stretches it back out to 16:9. It's hideous and ugly and that's probably why MS doesn't do that.

[BPzeBanshee]

Well it certainly looked okay on the widescreen TVs I tried. Doesn't sound too far off from how I did the old TATE in GMOSSE to account for the stretch/squish that happened. I guess that explains the weird lines and stuff that appears through emulators on the Wii then?

[njiska]

The way the Wii does "16:9" is a total hack. It renders the screen in 16:9, then horizontally compresses it to 4:3 and sends it over the cable. Your TV then stretches it back out to 16:9. It's hideous and ugly and that's probably why MS doesn't do that.

Ummm, MS does do that. That is in fact the only way to do a 16:9 over an NTSC signal at 480 lines. PAL is a bit of a different story dur to PALPlus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphic_widescreen

[trap15]

I was under the impression that Xbox 360 would only output 4:3 on the component cable, and not try to fake 16:9.

[njiska]

I was under the impression that Xbox 360 would only output 4:3 on the component cable, and not try to fake 16:9.

First thing is first, you need to stop referring to it as "fake 16:9" because that term is not accurate. This is a matter between Anamorphic and Native 16:9. Both produce a correctly proportioned 16:9 image, they just do it via different means. This is do to the technical aspects of the video signals in use.

When outputting an HD signal (720p, 1080i, 1080p), the Xbox 360 and PS3, as well as the original Xbox and PS2, output a video signal that is natively 16:9 aspect ratio. However when outputting a 16:9 image as a 480p NTSC signal, they can either output a letter-boxed version, which results in a loss of vertical resolution, or they can output an anamorphic signal, which allows the full use of the available vertical resolution and does not really sacrifice horizontal resolution. This is required as the NTSC format does not allow for native 16:9 video. When you tell an Xbox 360 to output in widescreen at 480p, this is what it does.

This is also how all non-letter-boxed widescreen was done on DVDs. While the image we see is 16:9, the video file on the disc is 4:3 with the video image compressed horizontally. When stretched back out by your TV it looks correct. It's how all SD widescreen TVs display widescreen video.

[mesh control]

Not in SF and everyone in this theatre is annoying. Bros to my right and juggalos on front of me. Fuck

I think I'm in love with a girl in SF (o^^o)
(annoying part is that i'm 385 miles away)

[powersoul]

The way some people updates their status on facebook.

Example?

2.00pm Just woke up! Good afternoon
Ok it isn't so bad. Yeah.

2.01pm Going to brush teeth
2.05pm Done with toilet, eating lunch
2.32pm Watching tv
3.14pm Friend called to ask if I wanna go out
3.20pm Bath time
3.35pm Out of the showers! Getting ready to go out
4.01pm bye peeps
4.08pm waiting for bus
4.20pm fking bus is taking long
4.26pm calling friend to tell him I would be late

And... So on. You get the idea. I mean, come on, you don't have to report your daily life to the world?!?!

[Ed Oscuro]

Careful, now: Why shouldn't they assume that? Logically, that assumption is internally consistent. If A then B, there are no As: therefore, there are no Bs.

Sure, I can do this

If A then B.
~A.
_________
~B.

Aw shit, that's denying the antecedent.

Obviously I needed to reformat the proposition! It doesn't seem like this is problematic, though: Denying the antecedent is a fallacy when there might be some other means for B to occur (for example, if C then B, ~A but also C would allow B to get through). In terms of this argument: If there are no "guns" (firearms, generally), how you gon' shoot someone?

In any case, nice catch sir.

The way some people updates their status on facebook.

Example?

2.00pm Just woke up! Good afternoon
Ok it isn't so bad. Yeah.

2.01pm Going to brush teeth
2.05pm Done with toilet, eating lunch
2.32pm Watching tv
3.14pm Friend called to ask if I wanna go out
3.20pm Bath time
3.35pm Out of the showers! Getting ready to go out
4.01pm bye peeps
4.08pm waiting for bus
4.20pm fking bus is taking long
4.26pm calling friend to tell him I would be late

And... So on. You get the idea. I mean, come on, you don't have to report your daily life to the world?!?!

This would be great for future anthropologists, except that all the Tweets will be deleted by then.

[Illyrian]

Greatest tweets I've ever seen:

16:22 - Gonna take a poop
16:23 - Poop is coming out

[njiska]

Assholes trying to pass of work at the office. Four times in the last two work days have I had someone lower than me try to get me to do their work, just because they see my name is attached to the work item. If it's your work, just fucking do it! Seriously annoying me this morning.

[Aliquantic]

Deleting PMs all the time in my inbox because it keeps filling up

[emphatic]

Deleting PMs all the time in my inbox because it keeps filling up

Create some folders and move the ones you need. More room for yu.