Wrath of Dagon

When some people shirk taxes, honest people wind up paying more. This discourages honest and beneficial economic activity and encourages dishonest and harmful one. It's not like no one at all is paying taxes there. That's not what I said at all. I was talking about crooked politicians stealing and spending public money instead of using it for public benefit it's meant for. Short term yes, private spending helps Greece more than paying interest to foreign bankers. But long term the economy will work well only if the person who actually earns the money is also the one who spends most of it, because that encourages him to produce and earn more. The basis of capitalism.

Not really, it's the difference between someone buying a new villa or opening a new Swiss bank account and building a road which will help economic development. No, because you're not changing the tax rates for those who are already paying. Assuming that the tax is on the profit, it shouldn't make anyone go out of business, since if they have no profit they pay no taxes anyway.

I thought they already are

I didn't mean that quote was the entirety of the article. I think his point is that we shouldn't quit while we're making progress.

A very good article on Afghanistan: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2011/0...t_it_could.html Petraeus should run for president, that's the second time he saved our bacon.

7 just means an average game, that's not the full scale

They're promising the new demo before November.

The first book was better than the game, that's for sure.

lol, there's no such thing as party leadership. The presidential candidate or president is the party leadership. The decision was all his, you can see why he has a reputation for being somewhat eccentric and erratic.

There was a huge Savings and Loans crisis in the 80's, so it's not like the financial system was so great back then either. It seems like instead of learning our lessons from that, we instead expanded the same principles to the entire financial sector. I don't know why we don't just look at what Canada does with their banks and do the same, I mean I do know but it's a shame that we don't.

Russia has no rule of law, any Western interests investing in there better beware, they could lose their entire investment. Apparently Russia can't even keep their oil infrastructure from crumbling, because of the rampant corruption. Also as far as I know Alexandr Nevski stopped the Teutonic Knights invasion, Ivan the Terrible expelled the Golden Horde.

I finished The Maimed God Saga NWN2 mod. Liked it a lot, for once a well-told and coherent story in an RPG.

The way things are going, probably someone who doesn't play BioWare's games. Whenever someone says "hardcore", you have to ask "compared to what?" It's a relative term.

Yes, that's why I specifically said last generation, trying to exclude the older games people consider classics.

Snowblind didn't use that engine, as it was developed by Crystal Dynamics, not by Ion Storm. Thief was a bit better, but still ****. They should have just used the UE 2 as it was, it would have allowed bigger levels. I'm sure Snowblind used the same engine, Crystal Dynamics and Ion Storm both belonged to Eidos. The whole point of Snowblind was to make more of a shooter game using the same engine as IW.

I don't know. WHat generation are we talking about it? I'm not sure what it's contemporaries are. I'm trying to remember what other games I played around the same time, but those years are all rather hazy at this point. IIRC, Thief: Deadly Shadows was released right around that time and was much, much better. I thought DS was actually very similar in quality, but yes, that one even tops IW. The environments were far more beautiful, the setting and story more interesting, and the stealth mechanics much better. But it was more linear, not an RPG, pretty much had only one solution to each level, and stealth was the only really viable mechanic. The generation for me would be the time of the original Xbox, so 2001-2005.

@Calax Well, rationing ammo means there's a possibility you might run out. I never got into that situation because I was careful about using it efficiently. The IW engine wasn't botched, they just didn't polish the game as it should've been. The same engine was used for Thief: DS with good results, except with a lot of glitches still. And they really made it work well in Project Snowblind, which was one of the best looking, smoothest running and having the most characters on-screen games at the time.

I had no problem finding enough ammo on the hardest setting. Obviously you had to use it judiciously, you use the rocket launcher on the Templar Paladins, not on street thugs. That's a very good thing btw.

What would be a better game?

Because people like nothing better than to bitch bitterly whenever things aren't done exactly as they want. Also may be the expectations were too high. Having played it without the pre-conceptions of playing the first game, I can say it was one of the best games of the last generation. Edit: There were multiple ways to complete each quest, several possible game play styles, four distinct endings, and some (though not many) long term consequences. So no C&C compared to modern games?

Any word on when they're planning to divide Poland?

A shame, I would much rather we started moving towards hydrogen and electric cars. Even with this process I imagine the the exhaust still causes massive air pollution. Those would require nuclear power to generate clean electricity, the prospects of that are pretty dim. I don't think burning natural gas derived gasoline would be very polluting, CO2 would be the main concern. It's probably better than burning coal to generate electricity, since with coal all the energy comes from carbon, where with NG and oil you're also burning hydrogen. With electric cars you also have to consider the environmental impact and energy cost of building and replacing all those giant batteries. Probably hydrogen fuel cells are the better solution, but still you need a clean way to generate electricity, and there's no hydrogen infrastructure currently. As far as running out of natural gas, big new deposits are coming on-line all the time in the US and elsewhere, thanks to the new methods of production that have been recently developed, so I don't think it's going to run out any time soon. Probably the small, modular nuclear power plants are the long term solution, or may be if they ever get fusion working, but we'll see. Edit: By new methods of production I mean fracking: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110612/ap_on_...ling_boom_towns

Yes, the esa statistics are completely fake and politically motivated. Sure, if you count minesweeper, bejeweled, facebook etc, they're correct, but they never explain that. $50-$60 games? Not so much.

Gates blasts NATO: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_gates_nato_d...2F0ZXNibGFzdHNu I don't know, isolationism seems pretty appealing just about now.

Anytime the developer says they highlight the choices to skip through the dialog as quickly as possible so you can get to the killing, I know the game isn't for me.