SteveThaiBinh

Maybe Obsidian had a roshan-style keyboard and the 'k', 'a' and 'e' keys kept sticking, so they used them for all their character names.

There's been a lot of criticism of LucasArts on these boards, but the disappearance of this movie/music patch, and their refusal to give any information about it, may be their most, perhaps only, unjustifiable act so far. For all their faults, LucasArts didn't turn on Obsidian and start a silly blame war when the Kotor 2 ending blew up in their faces. And their recent restructuring and committing to only 2 games a year suggests they recognise they've gone wrong in the past. But the thing with the movie/music patch shows contempt for gamers. If they aren't going to release it, let them say so, instead of sticking their fingers in their ears and hoping it'll all go away. It's sad to see a company seemingly so arrogant that they think public relations is beneath them.

I think they probably put a greater variety of robes or Jedi-friendly armour in Kotor 2 as a response to feedback from Kotor fans. With all the problems with the ending and the rushing of Kotor 2, sometimes we tend to forget that Obsidian made a lot of improvements, and many of these were in direct response to what fans were saying about Kotor 1: more robes, more upgrading, bringing back favourite characters, and so on. I appreciated the variety of robes a lot - great fun to wear a Jedi master robe and have two newly-Jedified followers running after you in padawan robes. It just felt right.

I think I might be a little too used to games like Kotor that hold your hand and tell you exactly what you should be doing at all times, but... (with as few spoilers as possible, this is my first play through) I've lost any kind of trail leading to the water chip. No character seems to have a clue where one might be found, or even to have any dialogue options referring to it. Should I be worried? Is there a clear trail that I have wandered off, or should I just keep plowing ahead confident that something will turn up?

Yet wasn't it remarkable (at least I found it so) to watch, on the night of the hurricane, the TV cameras pan around the stadium of those too poor to make it out of the city, and see barely a white face there? He sounded angry, let down and frustrated to me. This was apparently an interview to a local radio station that I was hearing, but I'd say he was expressing what many people in the city seem to feel. I hope there will be the US equivalent of an independent public inquiry, to sort out all the technical problems and get the plans right for the next time this happens. But the danger with such inquiries (we've found in the UK) is that they are so determined to be positive and constructive that they are reluctant to apportion blame, even where blame is due. That's why the blame game has to take place. If Mr Bush, the mayor and others feel they did the best they could, let them defend themselves.

If it means you were watching the Scooby-Doo movie, then yes, that is a very bad thing. :ph34r:

To get an alternative perspective.

I've been wondering about foreign assistance, offers and rejections. I doubt many in the outside world are laughing. No-one I know is. I heard a commentator on the ever-reliable Fox News suggest that people in Europe were laughing to see the US in trouble. It's sad that some people will use any excuse to push their Euro-bashing agenda. There are several reasons why so little aid was offered in the beginning. First of all, we were as slow as the US government to realise what a catastrophe this was. There have been so many hurricanes affecting the US, all with great damage to property and little loss of life. It took a while to recognise that this wasn't a hurricane, it was a flood - and there's a big difference. The second thing is that it's hard to believe that the US needs aid. On hearing of the tsunami, you instantly know that Indonesia and Sri Lanka are going to need help because the countries and the people are very poor. The US is the richest country in the world. Yet it turns out that they don't have a well-designed plan for this kind of event. The US government aid is getting there now, but it took a long long time. I don't blame the people of New Orleans for being angry with their government. It's also a very European approach to assume that the government has first responsibility to take care of the people. The fact that the people of New Orleans most affected are very poor doesn't stir us to give money because we know that the rich of America and the government of America have more than enough money to deal with the problem, and ultimately they have the duty to do so. Better to keep our money going to the tsunami victims (who still need help) and other development or aid projects. It's wrong to blame the weakness of the aid relief programme on the Iraq war. The one did not cause the other, but they are both symptoms of the same problem. A large country like the US, Russia or China, generates a lot of money for the government in the centre, and the politicians find it more interesting and fun to waste that money on foolish foreign adventures or prestige projects rather than the humble, practical poverty-alleviation programmes that are really needed. It also reflects a reverse in what was, in the 90s, a useful and positive widening of the concept of 'security' as it applied to people's lives. UNDP includes food security, health security, military security and environmental security to create a complex picture of what people need in order to live decent lives. Since the attacks of September 11, this balanced approach has been abandoned as military security dominates the agenda and budgets of the world.

Will petrol prices ever fall? Briefly, probably, but the trend is ever upwards, surely. With China and India developing and demanding more, and the OPEC countries and Russia already near full pumping capacity, the market will set a high price. Many European countries have set petrol prices artificially high with 'green' taxes in order to discourage consumption - I wonder if they will now reduce the tax burden. The US seems to have been very slow in getting fuel-efficiency going, but that means there's a lot of scope for improvement and cost savings in the coming years. Perhaps it's not quite as bad as people think.

Google never ceases to amaze me.

You wouldn't get my vote (assuming I still had one). Odd argument. How can the disenfranchised not be affected by being disenfranchised? Criminals lose their vote and their freedom simultaneously because of their actions. They recover their full rights (or should do) when they have served their sentences. As for the mentally ill, they should indeed be allowed to vote - nothing controversial there, I think: Link.

We learned about the firebombing of Dresden in school. It's fairly well known in the UK (our fault, after all). Papering over the cracks. Only democracy provides the framework for resolving these issues. Dictatorships may postpone the conflict, that's all. And then wrecking it again, and I'm not sure that its success was ever more than superficial. Hitler's approach required war and expansion to fuel the economy - war was built into the economy, if you like. Economic success has to be seen in this light.

In the quote, Mills is quite careful to separate power and information - so that the central authority responsible for gathering and disseminating information has little or no power. Is this realistic? This doesn't work for me. Information isn't neutral, and gathering and disseminating it cannot be a neutral activity. Plurality of sources rather than a single central 'authority' is more likely to work. A free press and the internet help a lot. An outside view can be useful, but decisions affecting local people are best taken locally. I absolutely agree that democracy is a work in progress. I hope that people are willing to try to make it better rather than abandoning it for some 'meritocratic' dystopia. The golden rule seems clear enough. So you'll agree that if a band of above-average intelligence citizens get together and decide that political rights should be withdrawn from those less intelligent than themselves, this would constitute a breach of the golden rule because it does harm to the disenfranchised.

Only Bioware can say whether the game sold as well as they needed it to, and if it's bad news, they'll never admit it in public. Does the fact that Bioware both developed and produced it mean that it doesn't need to make so much money as other games? I mean, surely there are fewer pointless executives to pay.

Honour takes the decision about withdrawal out of our hands. We cannot withdraw honourably while a legitimate Iraqi government is asking us to stay. That's the mess we made. It's not about us anymore. It's not about our agenda for withdrawal. We are hostage to the situation we have helped to create. Of course, we could just withdraw dishonourably, if we want the world to hold is in even more contempt than they do now.

If voting is a right, it cannot be lost (except in particular circumstances such as incarceration, in which case freedom is also lost). If voting is a privilege, then it can be withdrawn. The two definitions are central to the two points of view that are being argued. Neither has been established as fact. Are you sure they're separable? I don't think that good governance can be achieved by getting the right people at the top and giving them all the power and information. It tends to centralise power and put more power in the hands of the state - arguably a proven Bad Thing. Good governance may be about the quality of the decisions leaders make, but there remains the issue of legitimacy. In a meritocracy, the legitimacy of the government would supposedly come from their efficiency and good decisions. How realistic or sustainable is this? How soon before the government screws up (people aren't perfect), and the disenfranchised start demanding a change? And without democracy, they'll have no way to effect a change other than through violence, and the government will have to suppress them through violent means. Bad outcomes all round.

Vrook is difficult. Is Dantooine your first planet? He's easier if you finish the other planets first. Sometimes you can hide behind the bushes and heal yourself. Make sure you have good energy shields, too. Try using different lightsaber forms. And keep trying - in the end, you will kill him.

Perhaps so. Democracy is good at avoiding the big mistakes (famine, slavery, genocide), but not always so good at getting the 'little' things like education and the economy right. I'll still take it over any alternative, though. Agreed. Ceremonies are a good thing (I lived in Asia too long). We need better citizenship education all round. Do we have any Australians or Belgians here? How do we feel about compulsory voting, and fines/jail sentences for people who don't?

That's part of it, yes. However, I also mean that this idea is a step backward. The test is of course not about granting rights to those who pass, it's about denying rights to those who fail on the grounds that they will ultimately get a better deal from a more effective, high-IQ government. It's a patrician solution which I think history shows has failed. Democracies treat their people better than dictatorships because the people have power, and the politicians have some reason to fear their exercising that power. I suspect your system will ultimately turn into an abusive nightmare, with those who failed the test reduced to slavery. I'd like to see a survey of politicians that showed a correlation between IQ and effective government. I'd like to see an indicator for effective government, if it comes to that. The very concept of what good governance means is contested; that is why we need democracy to resolve it.

As I said, we will find out in time who they were. People too poor to afford house insurance does make some sense, alas. But there have been so many severe hurricanes in the US recently, I'm still surprised that people chose to stay, even to protect their property. Dead bodies in the water always carries the risk of disease and further death - this was a big worry after the Asian tsunami and most similar disasters. We always assume that the US is big and rich enough to look after itself, but perhaps they will need some of the rescue workers from other countries that specialise in this kind of thing.

How about the one where you have to build the tallest possible tower out of newspaper? Or the one where you have to drop an egg a metre distance without it breaking? Why would the people who fail the test obey the laws made by the people who pass the test? The government would have no legitimacy, and legitimacy is the whole point of democracy and the reason why it's so successful.

If it's true that nearly every game loses money and the only games that matter are the runaway successes, then Obsidian needs a runaway success. Is that likely to be NWN2? It is a PC-only game and a sequel - my (very limited) understanding is that it's rare for a sequel to sell as well as the original. Perhaps PNJ is their 'make or break game'.

The destruction of property was probably unavoidable, but the loss of life? There was plenty of warning, and as I said, the means of getting all these people out was there. Did people choose to stay in their houses out of ignorance? We saw the pictures of the football stadium, and it didn't look completely full. I guess we'll learn more in the days to come. The people of the US are largely literate, I believe.

The URL is just http://tinyurl.com/dhoku, doesn't seem to be pointing to a file. In any case, my computer won't open it, even doing what you suggested. Could be blocked by the uni, which is surprising given the stuff they don't block.

The mayor of New Orleans says that 'hundreds, probably thousands' of people died. This is insane - it's a wealthy, developed country with vast resources, an educated population and excellent infrastructure. How could this have happened?