OpticalMoose

I guess "It’s not for everyone" is the real takeaway here. I'm not a phone guy in general, but I've been using cards since BK was still selling 99¢ Whoppers. I'm guessing both of us are ready to pay before the cashier has our order rung up.

To each their own. (I'm finally admitting that I'm fighting a losing battle on writing checks though.)

Same here. I guess I should have pointed out that I'm not really much of a phone guy to begin with. I don't install many apps, and I stay logged out of Google. To me, losing a phone really just means losing my pictures and videos. The most expensive phone I've ever had was $200.

Using a phone sounds inconvenient to me. I usually just pull my card out of my wallet, wave it over the terminal until I hear a beep and that's it. Worst case scenario, I have to insert it into the chip reader or God-forbid swipe it through the slot like some kind of Neanderthal.

I'm kidding, but seriously, that's easier than screwing around with a phone, to me.

I pirated a certain 'crash cars and shoot'em up' game because, even though I own it on Steam, the gameplay (especially the launcher) absolutely sucks.

No more automatically downloading online content when I don't even play online and no more updates breaking my mods. It's worked out so well that I'm looking at pirating other games I already own.

I'm with ya on that. I could rant on and on about privacy, but this ain't the place for that, I guess. The gov't promised if we let ISPs and telcos turn over our data they could catch all the terrorists, and now 20 years later they can't even catch kids making prank phone calls (SWATting) or telemarketers.

I guess it's true, people get the leadership they deserve.

Be mad at them all you want. But being mad at them doesn't change anything.

Edit: Sorry. I didn't mean for that to come out snippy. My point is there's nothing wrong with being mad. It's the action that gets results.

Seriously. Why act like the NSA are the bad guys? It's literally their job. They would be negligent in their duties if they didn't do it.

If people want more privacy, they need to change the fucking laws.

I'd definitely swap as many parts in/out as possible before buying new stuff. Besides, you might end up finding out something just became unseated or unplugged - it happens over time. Just have some thermal paste handy before you start swapping CPUs.

Does it boot / POST at all?

Thanks for posting. I'm still new to this and had no idea what settings I should be using.