This was a first for me, flashing the BIOS. As with anything that might break my computer, I was scared silly, but everything seems to have worked out well, thankfully.
I think all settings are back to the way they were before and the one difference I’m noticing is that the Windows Experience Index rates my system’s “gaming graphics” performance as 4.8 now, it was 4.7 before. Another minor thing I noticed, in BIOS this time, was that the RAM voltage is no longer listed. Since it detected the required voltage correctly the first time I assume there would have been no problems now either, but I set it manually to 2.1V (or +0.3V actually, since the setting refers to the standard 1.8V) just to be sure.
A scary moment was when I saved the proper BIOS settings again, after initially loading fail-safe defaults right after the flash, and rebooted. It didn’t just reboot, it turned itself off, waited a couple of seconds and then turned itself back on. Let’s just say that those couple of seconds were quite long, I wasn’t expecting it to do that!
I’ll have to see if this also fixed the problem with the clock. Saw some people posting messages saying that they had experienced the same problem with this specific board under Vista (or Linux) and updating the BIOS to F2 either solved it or made the time loss be negligible, only a few seconds per day instead of over four minutes. If F2 did that, F3 should normally be even more likely to solve it, right?
As you should be well aware, there’s a war in Georgia. But it’s more than that, it’s the best chance the EU and NATO will have to resolve the “Russian problem”. Or at least it was, since they have already wasted it with meaningless talks and the moment is now lost.
Of course the Georgian president just wanted to regain control of South Ossetia and relied on international support to do so. It’s also true that his actions gave Russia the excuse it had been waiting for to launch this offensive. However, this offensive is also the excuse the EU and NATO should have been waiting for to make Russia pay for their controlling habits and therefore a chance they couldn’t afford to lose, especially considering the timing.
It’s not only about Georgia. The real issue here is allowing Russia to regain their influence in the area, essentially becoming the Soviet Union once again. Once you allow it once, there’s no going back. But fear can work both ways, so a united response could send them running back, especially now since their most powerful potential allies, China, are rather busy. But that response had to come swiftly and clearly.
We are looking at two regions which have not been conquered or colonized by force by Georgia, but which desire to break away from it. However, their desire to break away isn’t necessarily a desire for independence, as they seem quite happy to attach themselves to Russia. Seeing as Russia supports this, it can certainly be accused of attempting to conquer parts of Georgia. A cultural conquest has the same result as a military one, but may actually be worse since it’s harder to prove and therefore less likely to be stopped by international intervention. And, knowing the way they responded to the Chechnya situation, the hypocrisy is obvious. And they also didn’t seem bothered by the measures taken by China to beat down the Tibetans’ desire for independence, despite the fact that they had been conquered by force to begin with.
Saying that, it’s obvious that Russia can’t accuse Georgia of invading South Ossetia. It’s true that it had a degree of autonomy, but it was part of Georgia and a country can’t invade itself! And the military aid sent to Abkhazia can’t even be explained by that, not to mention the continued offensive into previously undisputed Georgian territory. So it can be argued that Georgia gave Russia the excuse for this attack, but this attack should have given the EU and NATO the excuse to target Russia. They are conquering an independent and democratic state and this is no longer allowed in today’s world. Or at least it shouldn’t be.
Now you have to keep in mind that Russia is a very powerful country and they also have powerful allies, China coming first to mind. Thinking about that, a World War III seems extremely likely and it’s not going to be Muslims against Christians but instead have Russia and China on one side and NATO and the EU on the other. Therefore, an actual war is undesirable. But Georgia provoked this attack at the best possible moment. China is too busy with the Olympics to help Russia right now, they have their pants down and shoelaces tied together! Medvedev is also rather “green” and at the start of the conflict Putin, who obviously holds the reins, was in China. It was the only moment when Russia stood alone and it could have been scared away. Then the world’s eyes could be on China before the end of the Olympics so they would find themselves alone as well and unable to react.
The right thing to do would have been to take the UN completely out of it, since Russia can block any of its decisions that it doesn’t like, and have NATO, the EU and any other like-minded countries immediately respond in force. The time for talking is over the moment somebody takes a shot and all these threats of “cooling relations” have no relevance. Russia holds the world’s supply of natural gas and knows the EU relies on it for 40% of its energy needs, it doesn’t care whether the relations are heated or cooled or anything in between! They see that they can scare everybody else into submission, so the only right thing to do would have been to prove that’s not the case with an immediate military response.
I’m not advocating attacking Russia directly, at least not unless needed. But the proper response would have been immediately sending troops to support Georgia in defending its territory and national integrity, therefore facing Russia with a very clear choice: Either they stop the fight in Georgia and accept the sanctions the international community would impose upon them for this action or, according to their own view of things, they start a war with everyone else. I mean, if they considered that Georgia attacked them by attacking South Ossetia where they had stationed troops, it makes perfect sense to say they’d attack the EU and NATO by continuing the offensive on Georgia once EU and NATO troops would be stationed there. Either way, with China unable to help at the moment, they would have been forced to withdraw. They’re not crazy enough to start World War III alone!
Such a withdrawal would have been similar to a surrender, allowing the others to impose terms. Not that they couldn’t impose sanctions for invading an independent and democratic state anyway. And this is a chance the EU should have jumped at. They could have forced Russia to accept their terms on energy matters, therefore solving this extremely pressing problem! There is no other way to solve this issue on the EU’s terms; any diplomatic solution will have to be on Russia’s terms or it won’t work. And they could also work on Russia’s military capabilities, therefore delaying the moment they’ll be fully prepared for World War III and giving the rest of the world a better chance to prepare for it, or perhaps even prevent it.
The facts are very simple: Georgia gave the world the best, and possibly the only, chance to stop Russia, and perhaps also China, without actually starting World War III. But instead of seeing it for what it is and grasping it with both hands, the EU and NATO crapped their pants and apparently didn’t have any to spare, so they hid in the bathroom and are just yelling through the door while trying to figure out how not to shame themselves when they’ll eventually have to come back out. This only serves to make Russia feel even more at ease when they try to make things go their way. It shows them that they have already scared everyone else away, that they can expand their influence over the area of the former Soviet Union and also pressure the rest of the world into accepting their terms.
There is no way to get things back to the way they were after this. Somebody wins and somebody loses. And I’m not talking about Georgia. Georgia is irrelevant in this conflict. It’s either Russia or the EU and NATO, nothing in between. We’re talking about one country, forced to act alone, who seems to be winning against two large international alliances! What leverage would those alliances have over anything anymore if they concede defeat here without even fighting?
In short, world leaders continue to act when they should talk and talk when they should act… And one terribly bold action is allowed to go to waste instead of becoming the turning point of a new world order, or at least pivotal in pushing back Russia’s influence and also somewhat deterring China’s potential plans. The world will live to regret this lack of action, and what’s worse is that it won’t be those who made the decision not to act who’ll suffer the most as a result of it.
Reading doesn’t seem to come so naturally to me anymore. I have Black Powder War in front of me on the desk for the past few weeks, after starting it and then stopping after just a few chapters. Meant to continue a few days ago, read one more chapter and then left it again. Until recently it was intentional, had just a couple of books I could still read and wanted to make them last. But since I now have a few more I actually mean to read but it’s like I just never think of it.
When I do read a little I get so excited that I can hardly focus on what I’m actually reading. But then I put it down after a chapter or two and forget all about it, even if it’s right in front of me. It’s like my brain doesn’t consider reading as a potential activity anymore. I’d sometimes be bored out of my wits, have the book within reach and it just doesn’t cross my mind that I could pick it up and read. Went too long without a decent supply of books I think.
I just finished Final Fantasy VII Tuesday. Despite being no less than ten years old, retaining the console controls and relying on a system that doesn’t suit my playing style (I’m mainly talking about materia), I found it really enjoyable. The things I didn’t like made me not focus too much on character development and side quests, which is strange for me, but the story and message kept me playing and made this one of the few games I’ve ever finished without taking a long break (“long” meaning weeks or, more likely, months). Despite being rather simple and a lot of things being lost in the translation, it had something to say and did so well enough.
I have also recently read an interview posted on IGN about the upcoming Diablo III and glanced at their review of Final Fantasy XII (which I’m not going to be able to play since there’s no PC version). Then my mind compared something said in that review, namely that it can take several hours to actually “get going”, with the talk about the story elements from the interview. The difference is significant, though it’s nice to see that more complex story elements will exist in Diablo III, despite the player not being required to pay much attention to them.
It’s certainly true that many people these days have short attention spans, especially the younger ones, who make up most of the gamers by any stretch of the term. It’s also true that another large number of people don’t usually have the time for complex and involved storylines. I guess that’s how things stand and, as nice as it’d be if people would develop longer attention spans and slow down their hectic lives, they shouldn’t be forced to do so in order to play a game. But neither should those who like to immerse themselves into deep and complex stories and worlds be forced to make do with the simpler ones created for the others.
That said, I have a question: Why don’t high profile games feature separate “action” and “story” modes? The companies that make them could afford it and it’d be a nice way to give everyone what they want. The “action” mode would pass quickly through the non-critical story elements, perhaps skip some movies, highlight relevant portions of text (or even display only those portions) and feature shortened versions (or even only summaries) of most dialogues, allowing those who don’t care too much about the story to focus on the other things. On the other hand, the “story” mode would offer a complete experience, including detailed character and NPC backgrounds that you can uncover, very involved dialogues, “books” to read in-game on topics that are not exactly relevant or in any way related to what you need to do and longer and frequent movies and scripted scenes whenever they could immerse you further into the story and atmosphere of the game.
That way developers would no longer need to find that elusive balance between action and story, which usually results in leaving both sides somewhat dissatisfied even on the rare occasions when it is achieved. Those who just want the action won’t be slowed down by story elements that aren’t truly necessary, while those who desire the full experience would also be able to enjoy it.
It shouldn’t be hard to code, just add one more condition for each event in order to choose the version to load according to that setting. It would make games take up more space, but that shouldn’t be much of a problem these days. And creating the separate versions shouldn’t take a noticeable amount of extra time either since coming up with a story usually requires having both a summary and a lot of details in mind.
As a next step in the international plan of bringing the iron fist down over the Internet, the British government wants to block pro-suicide sites. They’d also like ISPs to automatically redirect those who want to access such sites to organizations who try to prevent suicide.
I won’t rant about the right to die again, did that plenty of times so far, the real problem this time is greater than that. This is controlling the Internet, controlling what people can say or see according to the government’s views of right and wrong, even blocking things that aren’t illegal. We’re talking about stamping out free speech!
What’s even more worrying is the wording used, assuming the quotes were accurate. Who exactly decides what is “harmful or distasteful” or “offensive”? (From my point of view, such an initiative fits that definition perfectly.) And if those who decide that information on suicide is harmful are allowed to block it because of that, how long before they’ll decide to block other “harmful” things such as revealing incriminating information about those in power, criticizing the government, the opposition’s political campaigns and other such things, to focus only on a single issue? This is thought police, as simple as that!
Moving further down that line, doing something like this implies total monitoring of the Internet and each person’s on-line activity. No warrant, no proven illegal activity (actually, no illegal activity at all), just permanent monitoring to see if anybody ever does anything that they’d consider to be “wrong”. That’s a police state, and thought police at that! Any “guidance” that might benefit the receiver under some circumstances becomes censorship that only benefits the giver when it’s forced…
I guess the Internet is a big thorn in their side, because it allows people to speak out and encourages free thought. Certain people who have gotten too used to having power over others really don’t like that. So the assault on the Internet is likely the priority right now because it’s the quickest way to spread information and any tyrant knows that informed people are a threat to their continued reign…
First it’s protecting people from terrorists, now it’s protecting them from themselves… It’s easy to find some reasons to take away fundamental freedoms, but next to impossible to actually find good reasons. That said, why do we stand for it, letting them nibble away at our rights and freedoms little by little until it’ll be too late to do anything meaningful about it?
I know I’m becoming more and more bitter about this and am starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I see the pattern, the slope and the quicksand at its base. Once we slip past a certain point, there’s no going back…
