KINGARTHUR'S PROFILE

Just a friendly reminder to everyone to always keep multiple backups on multiple storage media (Testament's backup regiment is a great example). Just had one of my external HDDs fail on me (not surprisingly the oldest one!), fortunately with no data loss since I luckily had signs the thing was going south and I managed to copy the data onto another external HDD.

Those storage media failures really do come out of the blue when you least expect it.

RMN locker.

author=eplipswich
In my case, I still prefer keeping my backup in my handy thumbdrive,

Local backups are almost always better than remote backups because you have direct control and ownership over the backup media.

author=8bitbeard

author=KingArthur
And while we're busy regulating what software can run on what OS, let's also regulate what OS can run on what hardware with UEFI Secure Boot, which results in most modern computers equipped with UEFI refusing to boot anything besides Windows 8 as mandated by Microsoft, because Windows 8 is the only choice consumers will ever need! Nobody cares about Windows 7, Windows Vista, Window XP, and all the 2127642786 Linux distros after all!

Eew, really? I didn't know this was a thing. This is pure evil.

To be fair, we can disable UEFI Secure Boot depending on the computer or motherboard. Only systems that run Windows RT are required to have UEFI Secure Boot activated and the option to turn it off disabled as mandated by Microsoft; more common systems certified to run x86 versions of Windows 8 are only required to have UEFI Secure Boot active, the option to allow disabling of it is left up to the discretion of the computer/motherboard manufacturers.

author=CyberDagger
How do I find out of my computer has UEFI? I'm gonna need to install a Linux distro for uni work in the near future, and I'd hate to be screwed out of my fun/work dualboot.

You can probably find out by going into your BIOS/EFI and looking around, if that fails you can always check your motherboard's spec sheet. EFI/UEFI is basically a modern successor to the venerable BIOS we've always used, so it's bound to be mentioned prominently somewhere.

I also know that some Linux distros have actually paid Microsoft to acquire a UEFI Secure Boot key. Fedora paid Microsoft $99 USD for a key as far as I know. Others like Ubuntu are also persuing similar avenues if I recall correctly.

Seriously though, if an OS needs to pay Microsoft to be allowed permision to run on everyday hardware there is a clear ethical problem here. UEFI Secure Boot is a great idea in principal, it's designed to keep malware like rootkits from running at boot, but in reality it's just being used as another avenue to regulate the users and monopolize the market (unless you pay $$$).

Names that really break immersion for me aren't combinations of names from differing cultures. There are many real life examples of mixed names such as plenty of Japanese ni-sei and san-sei with English first names and Japanese family names, for example. A specific example is US Senator Daniel Inouye who recently passed away, "Inoue" is a very common Japanese family name and "Daniel" is a common English first name as we would all likely know.

What does break immersion for me are names that are supposed to be from a certain culture except they are completely made up. The worst offenders are amateur authors and developers trying to make a name sound Japanese and completely and utterly failing as to its authenticity, which comes off as even more jarring to me than most since I'm Japanese. If you're going to name your characters, for the love of god please research the culture behind that name if you're going to draw any inspiration from something, it makes you and your characters look stupid if you don't.

Merry Belated Christmas!