Picked up a new MSI gaming laptop recently. Came with Windows 8.1 and updated it to Windows 10 Pro (had a spare 8.1 Pro disc to do the upgrade). 1. Installed Start10 (saw a later post that you installed it as well) and rarely look at the Windows 10 menu again. 2. Cortana was the first thing I disabled, along with web search. I want to search my computer, not the interwebs. I have Firefox and Google for that. 3. Disabled as much of the "phoning home" as I could both during the upgrade and post upgrade. 4. Local account creation seems to be hidden away more than in Windows 8.1 Overall, the laptop and OS are working well for my needs. VS2015CE installed without any issues. Expression 4 Suite works well. Still need to install my video editing suite and a number of other small utilities. I've only run across one or two games (so far) that I haven't been able to run at all. And some of the older games no longer spew rainbow colors all over the screen (e.g. StarCraft). Pretty impressed with it overall. Laptop is an MSI GE62 2QD Apache Pro with 16 GB memory, 256 GB M.2 solid state (with ports for two more), GTX 960M with 2 GB memory, 2 TB hdd, DVD R/W (which can be switched out for another hdd if desired), 15.6" full HD screen. Fast little machine. :) Flynn

_If we can't corrupt the youth of today,
the adults of tomorrow will be no fun...
_

Nice. I have one in my laptop and it works wonderfully. :) Flynn

_If we can't corrupt the youth of today,
the adults of tomorrow will be no fun...
_

I recently picked up an Acer Aspire v5-552G-X852[^] system. For the most part, it's a great system and it's possible to install Windows 7 on it. But the trackpad is elephanting awful. Both the buttons are built in to the track pad, and the whole thing is so hyper-sensitive it's way too easy to accidentally move, select or otherwise completely miss what you're trying to point at whilst trying to click or (especially) right-click something. On the other hand, the keyboard's not terrible and the 1 TB storage is pretty nice. I also maxed the memory at 12 GB (4 GB is hardwired to the board or I'd have put 16 GB in it). It should speed up quite a bit when I get an SSD for it later this year. :-\ For a desktop, I built a system from the ground up - first time I'd done that since an AMD K6 550 some 10-ish years ago. That has a 240 GB SSD, a 1 TB hybrid and a 750 GB hybrid drive in it. 16 GB RAM, Core i7 4770 CPU and a nVidia GTX 650 Ti. Visual Studio absolutely flies on it, and it runs pretty much any game I throw at it with no problems. Flynn

_If we can't corrupt the youth of today,
the adults of tomorrow will be no fun...
_

The remastered effects for that episode are exceptionally well-done. Especially the damage to the U.S.S. Constitution. If you haven't checked out the remastered effects, you should. Most are actually pretty subtle - like the Gorn blinking. Also, the restoration of the show was very nicely done. Even better, the Blu-Rays have both the remastered and original effects, so you can easily compare just by switching the angle. Flynn

_If we can't corrupt the youth of today,
the adults of tomorrow will be no fun...
_

After recently watching nearly all of the series, I think my overall favorite was Enterprise, once it got going. In the beginning it was pretty rough, but about midway through the second season it started getting better. Can't really pick a favorite episode really as I enjoyed most of them. Phlox was overall my favorite character. I bought the original series on Blu-Ray (so far the only "canon" Trek series I own - I also have The Animated Series). I hadn't seen them in years. The show still holds up pretty well, actually. I especially loved The Doomsday Machine, The City on the Edge of Forever and Tomorrow is Yesterday. The remastered effects are pretty damn good, and I loved watching the series that one of the secondary actors filmed while on set during the series' run. Side note: Kirk's full name - James Tiberius Kirk - was revealed in an episode of the Filmation animated series (Bem), along with several other staples of Star Trek ("Beam me aboard" being another). While it's not considered "canon," it contributed quite a bit to Trek lore and included a few sequels to TOS episodes like More Tribbles, More Troubles and Mudd's Passion. TNG had some good episodes, but I was especially fond of Q-Who for introducing the Borg, and Best of Both Worlds for Locutus. And subsequently hated First Contact for turning the Borg into the xenomorphs from Aliens and Voyager for completely nerfing the Borg by the end of the series. To me the Borg were far creepier when they didn't have a queen or when they couldn't insta-assimilate the crew. One of the strongest scenes in Best of Both Worlds is watching Picard's horror as he is slowly assimilated into the collective. DS9 had a slow start, but by the third season really hit its stride. I didn't much like DS9's stand-alone episodes. The show worked best when it continued the Dominion arc. The only side journey I really liked were the mirror universe episodes. Also, it seemed like they pretty much dropped Sisko as the profit until the very end of the series, when they just suddenly decided it was important again. It was in the background, but I would have liked to see more done with it over the course of the series. Overall, Voyager is my least favorite series. Not because of Janeway, she rocked. Chakotay was a great character as well. But some of the other characters were just awful. Tuvok, Kes, Neelix, Seven, Harry and Tom just grated on me for various reasons. Tom worked best in his Captain Proton episodes, but otherwise was just a jerk, Kim was just there most of th

Almost as bad as listening to Vogon poetry... :-\ Sorry, Dave. Couldn't resist, heh. Flynn

_If we can't corrupt the youth of today,
the adults of tomorrow will be no fun...
_

It will certainly be interesting to see who's Who this time around... MrsFlynn was just getting used to Matt Smith (she really loved David Tennant, heh), generally referring to him as Baby Who. He'd just graduated to Toddler Who when Matt announced he was leaving. It's one of the few shows we really look forward to watching each year. :-\ Flynn

_If we can't corrupt the youth of today,
the adults of tomorrow will be no fun...
_

RugbyLeague wrote:

play Stargazer with the volume turned up to 11

11 is too soft on my car stereo. I find a better volume setting between 35 and 40, heh. :-\ Hadn't heard of Rainbow either (wasn't much into Heavy Metal until just recently), but I'll have to look it up now. Flynn

_If we can't corrupt the youth of today,
the adults of tomorrow will be no fun...
_

First song that popped into my head was ELO's "Can't Get it Out of My Head" from their Eldorado album. Which is wrong, but accurately describes the Kylie Minogue earworm you just planted... :-\ Flynn

_If we can't corrupt the youth of today,
the adults of tomorrow will be no fun...
_

Figures. One of these days I'll find a copy of it for the usual mp3/CD price. :) Flynn

_If we can't corrupt the youth of today,
the adults of tomorrow will be no fun...
_

Haven't heard this song in years! :) Reminds me of a quest for a song I listened to in high school. Never could find the album or single, but I knew the song's title and artist (even pretty much all the words) for the longest time. Finally found an uploaded copy of the video on YouTube. It was Holiday by Other Ones[[^]] - a one-hit wonder in the US. I've checked a number of sources and still haven't been able to find an official copy of the song for sale. :( Flynn

_If we can't corrupt the youth of today,
the adults of tomorrow will be no fun...
_

Echoing others here - get it checked right away. Especially if you have a family history of diabetes. Could be a number of things. Mine was macular retinapothy, or bleeding in the back of my eyes. I ended up with a six month regimine of Avastin shots in my eyes along (yes, a needle in my eye -- ugh!) with laser surgery. I'm lucky. My vision is better than it was, but no where as good as it used to be. Don't mess with your vision. Flynn Edit to fix spelling

_If we can't corrupt the youth of today,
the adults of tomorrow will be no fun...
_

Count me as number 3. Installed it on my Acer Ultra/Netbook during the Consumer Preview and haven't looked back. Keep Windows 7 on my desktop for compatibility reasons, but I'm already moving the majority of my stuff to a Windows 8 partition that will eventually take over the system. :) Flynn

_If we can't corrupt the youth of today,
the adults of tomorrow will be no fun...
_

Sweet! I already have the game and the Plutonium Pack. It was interesting trying to get it to work in Windows 7 64-bit as there is a patch you must run to get the Plutonium Pack to install. Unfortunately, it requires 16-bit, so I ended up cheating. I had a Windows XP VM on my computer. I installed using that, then copied my Duke 3D folder from the VM to my DOSBox folder. Worked a treat and I'm back to blasting alien scum the way only Duke can. Installed Duke 1 and 2 while I was at it, heh. Flynn

_If we can't corrupt the youth of today,
the adults of tomorrow will be no fun...
_

Heck, I still have two working models. Along with about all four decades worth of consoles (pretty much all Nintendo and Sony). Flynn

_If we can't corrupt the youth of today,
the adults of tomorrow will be no fun...
_

* Watching Dr. Who with MrsFlynn and having her admit that "Baby Who" (her name for Matt Smith) isn't so bad. :-\ * Watching the sun rise in the morning on the way to work. * Not drifting into the oncoming lane while watching the sun rise on the way to work... Flynn

_If we can't corrupt the youth of today,
the adults of tomorrow will be no fun...
_

Pete - "And the best jokers were Mark Hammill and Cesar Romero." Amen. Especially Hammill. His performance in in the recent Batman Arkham games has been phenomenal. He played The Trickster in the live-action The Flash series. The genesis of his portrayal of The Joker was definitely shown in his performance there. Kevin Conroy is the best Batman. :) Flynn

_If we can't corrupt the youth of today,
the adults of tomorrow will be no fun...
_

Unfortunately, it looks like his site host is down at the moment. Link above doesn't work; neither does the top-level link from Google. Too bad, I'd love to check out the books. I like UI/UX design, heh. :-\ Flynn

_If we can't corrupt the youth of today,
the adults of tomorrow will be no fun...
_

Thanks. Registered for a Linux license. I've been wanting to try it out for some time now. :) Flynn

_If we can't corrupt the youth of today,
the adults of tomorrow will be no fun...
_

I've been messing around with MVC 3 and I'm not certain I really understand it yet. I've been through the MVC Music Store tutorial and some things make sense, but some of it seems a little too magic for my tastes. But, I'm still plugging along with the evaluation as I've been asked to work on a help ticket system and MVC does look like it will simplify the coding if I can get the individual processes to gel in my brain. Otherwise, I'll just n-tier it and call it good. :-\ As for whether it should be used foe everything? No. Like any technology, it should be used where it makes sense. Flynn

_If we can't corrupt the youth of today,
the adults of tomorrow will be no fun...
_