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Everything posted by Zoraptor
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The Political Thread - Browncoat edition... down with the Alliance!
Zoraptor replied to Gorth's topic in Way Off-Topic
The Ockers never actually had a shut down then. It would theoretically have happened, at the end of November, but never actually did since the contentious Supply bill was passed in mid November (on the same day Whitlam was sacked and largely because... he forgot to tell his party's senators he'd been sacked and it was being passed for PM Fraser instead). Also Westminster System vs a US system which doesn't have the same concepts of Supply to anywhere near the same degree nor Confidence- at all effectively- and has an Executive President while the Governor General is decidedly non executive except in this sole case. Fact check status: Not factual let alone ultrafactual/ Pants On Fire/ Fakenews SAD!/ More war on truth from the alt left/ whatever other clichés I can't be bothered writing. (For US types the equivalent would be the House and Senate disagreeing on a budget; Guam and Puerto Rico being granted Senators which could give D a majority in the Senate; Pelosi is effective executive head of the government as the House trumps the Senate but the Senate can still block legislation; the President being appointed rather than elected and their only real power being the power to sack ministers and which has never been used; ministers are appointed by Pelosi who is herself a minister and can be sacked; and if Pelosi cannot pass Supply or Confidence measures then whoever the R minority leader is gets a crack at being executive head of the government and if he fails you get a full deck election of both houses. Pelosi cannot pass Supply measures, Supreme Court says she cannot appoint senators for Guam/ PR but there must an election by mid next year, President sacks Pelosi but Pelosi doesn't tell everyone, Senate passes Supply measure for new R Speaker with D senators thinking they'd won the standoff, R now run the government and decide to dissolve Congress, R win elections, President eventually resigns and leaves the country because D are butthurt, Pelosi eventually becomes well known for wanting to turn the US into a constitutional monarchy to avoid the situation repeating) -
Officially, Daredevil was not cancelled for any external factors, it was cancelled for not being successful (enough). Unofficially Disney+ must have had an influence at least, but there were also some other intrinsic issues that were known about before hand like Netflix wanting 10ep seasons and Marvel not budging on 13, and the shows were fundamentally very expensive to make. It also seems likely that cancelling the poorly performing shows would make the better performing ones less economic rather than more. My personal opinion is that Daredevil would have continued if Marvel had been flexible but that some cancellations were absolutely inevitable whatever that situation. And whatever else, Daredevil was one show, every other Netflix Marvel property was regarded as at least a tier lower.
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They already make at least one though it isn't an 'independent' chip but a coprocessor, it's their 'security processor'/ mandated NSA backdoor chip. Intel also made ARM chips via their purchase of the DEC part of the joint venture ARM/ DEC StrongARM chip (and, being Intel, some legal strongarming too), and StrongARM was a genuine potential competitor on desktop (up to 300MHz in 1997, and you could daisychain up to 8 (?) processors via Hydra, though for some reason that feature got killed off...) StrongARM is a bit indicative. ARM on desktop is like mainstream VR gaming, game streaming services and the Year of the Linux Desktop; it's always just a few years off. My dad actually went to university with one of ARMs founders and got a tour around their facility in Cambridge in 1992, and we had a Acorn RISC PC with a StongARM in it- indeed, it's still in my shed. No doubt nVidia will be very keen to get ARM into laptops though as a way to even the playing field vis-a-vis Intel and AMD; though their Tegras really aren't competitive as well as being hamstrung by, well, Jensen being Jensen. The Switch jailbreak has been described as a security flaw but it's actually a feature, documented by nVidia.
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Yeah, Daredevil quality wise was great, but it was cancelled at least ostensibly due to not being successful enough- ie being too expensive for the subscribers/ views it got. You also have to take the whole lot of Marvel shows into account rather than just one title. As for the Titans trailer being too movie MCU, I didn't get that at all- it was meant to showcase an ensemble and be sort of grimdark, but I don't really associate ensemble (solely) or grimdark with MCU. If anything it was like a Legends of Tomorrow trailer if that were a grimdark show with no fun allowed. All the CW DC shows do ludicrously well streaming and internationally and even Gotham does decently there, plus Titans has done well too- in the end that's why there are so many of them with more coming. You can argue the quality of them, but not their success. The non Netflix Marvel adult orientated TV portfolio is not exactly packed with runaway, heh, success and it would be positively inhuman to make people sit through some of their efforts. AoS is fine but it's only about as successful as Gotham, Agent Carter I liked, but IIRC it was literally the lowest rated show on the big 4 when showing. In the end though the only objective way to judge success is longevity of the series. Since Arrow debuted there have been 14 DC TV series in total with 52 seasons between them, 2 have been cancelled (Constantine and Powerless) under 5 seasons; with iZombie and Gotham to finish after their S5s, to be fair, but a 5 season show is at least fairly successful. Over the same time frame there have been 12* Marvel shows covering 25 seasons, only one has made 5 seasons and 6 have been cancelled, with Punisher and JJ probably to be added. Also, subjective as it may be, I haven't even heard of 'The Gifted' or 'Cloak and Dagger' which are ongoing despite being pretty well informed, and I've barely seen anyone discuss Runaways either. *Legion is excluded if we're talking MCU, since it's the one (?) Marvel TV show that isn't MCU. It's also, sadly, cancelled after s3 due to ratings. Artistically, it's very good but it's a failure commercially and I'd argue that S2 was just too esoteric for its own good. IIRC he said in series that he can transform into other things- but frankly, CGI budget. Even just with the Tiger it's a bit hmm in terms of animation and integration into the scenes.
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My main problem with the DC trailer for Titans (apart from the song and to an extent the pacing) was that the 'f___ Batman' line gave the impression it would be stupidly edgy for the sake of it rather than being mature in the more positive sense. The Netflix trailer fixed those issues. Then again I'd never paid the slightest attention to (Teen) Titans beforehand so didn't know/ care if anyone had been left out etc.
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In movies, sure. On TV, nah. The 'universe' part of MCU has been great for the movies but pretty close to actively terrible for TV since TV is seen so much as a secondary medium. DC's approach of letting the shows do their own thing and link as much or as little as they like is far better for TV. The only really bad thing about DC's approach to TV is being arbitrary about who and what can be used due to whatever movies they're planning as if people couldn't tell TV Deathstroke or Deadshot plus multiple others apart from the movie versions. Movie wise DC is a mess, that they have two Joker movies with different actors in production at the same time just about sums things up there perfectly. But in terms of successful adult orientated TV shows Marvel is miles behind, albeit in part due to the, heh, meta issue of the Disney vs Netflix stoush. Titans' (DC made/ US/ original) trailer was not great either. The international Netflix trailer and the actual series though were good. Personally I think Doom Patrol is inherently a bit of an odd choice, but I'll give it a chance. Plus, it has Tim Dalton.
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Can't forget what you don't know about. This looks really neat, thanks for the tip. It's on sale at GOG 60% off for the next day and a bit if you do want to pick it up. I'd heartily recommend it as well, though 'hard and unforgiving' is certainly an accurate description.
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I would have thought that the changes for touchscreens in the phone/ tablet versions would be harder to pull off than adapting for controllers, and from what I've been told the mobile versions are decently enough adapted. Guess things like selecting the characters might be a bit cumbersome/ annoying if they can't work out a decent quick system since you have to do it so often. But while I doubt they're a particularly good fit for consoles or will sell well they should be a quick and reasonably easy port with the major consoles being AMD PCs under the hood.
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The Political Thread - Browncoat edition... down with the Alliance!
Zoraptor replied to Gorth's topic in Way Off-Topic
I guess my view is predicated on the EU being an 'infinite expansion' project for its architects- they don't want to do anything that would limit it, so they don't want the UK gone permanently even if it would give short term satisfaction (and discourage other potential leavers). I'm certainly no fan of the EU but within the stipulations mandated by their worldview I think they've handled the UK leaving quite well. If it were a less important nation they'd probably do more to try and end run the referendum or outright blackmail/ threaten to stick the knife in, but from their pov they really do need the UK back and preferably in such a way that they won't be continually on the verge of leaving every few years. If so, they'll take up the mantle of William Wallace (movie version) and ensure Scottish freedom. Hmm. Scotland has oil, and they won't let Trump build any more golf courses, and the locals don't like his hotels being there which are there. Might need some long term occupation and stabilisation. -
That was a theory, but Dinah still being around in the flash forwards seems to make it pretty unlikely.
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Her actor is very good and is very natural with every other actor in the series, but the character herself just has too much baggage for me stemming from her introduction and consistent poor writing/ plotting, which all the new recruits suffered from. Even really simple stuff like her having literally the same name as Laurel's mother/ Quentin's wife is never addressed as if the writers were hoping no one would notice. Haha no. They clearly have an endpoint in mind for Barbara but their journey to get her there has been contrived, even for a Gotham plot line, and she's been used as a sidekick for more interesting villains most of the time as they have no idea what to do with her by herself. Diggle's wife Lyla (Audrey Marie Anderson, iirc) is also in the same episode and a few previous, playing The Governor's girlfriend. Agent Liberty on Supergirl (Sam Witwer) was in the series 1 Walking Dead Finale in the tank Rick gets stuck in too and has been in heaps of sci fi stuff like BSG, Force Unleashed, Smallville. All the CWDC shows are pretty big on the stunt casting, especially Supergirl. I like Kacey Rohl, but there are far too many hackers in Arrow. Just doesn't have a purpose, especially with Mr Terrible being around, unless Felicity leaves. Wild Dog though is fine, now that they're not doing the idiotic Civil Bore storyline where he was insufferable. (To be honest, I'd move Felicity and Diggle into a 'not the suicide squad' show and out of Arrow if I were in charge, even with Thea and Quentin gone Arrow still has core cast bloat)
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The Political Thread - Browncoat edition... down with the Alliance!
Zoraptor replied to Gorth's topic in Way Off-Topic
I'd be a lot more charitable than that, not something I usually am when it comes to the EU. Being obnoxious and obstructionist would only ensure that Britain would be gone, permanently, instead of probably coming back at some point. It would also provide more ammunition, not less, for EU skeptics due to the appearance of trying to force the referendum to be set aside* and would be justifiably labeled as part of 'Project Fear 2' in the UK. "You don't want to play with us? Well, we're taking out ball and going home!" doesn't even work well in the schoolyard. *which, lest we forget, has been the usual approach when 'anti EU' referenda have passed in member countries. Well yeah, they've been relatively open about not expecting leave to win and by inference never really did any preparation for a non remain result- Cameron would never have called the referendum if he thought he would lose. About the only prep they did was the Project Fear 1 research about how much the economy would contract if leave won; and that's been counterproductive since the estimates were absolutely miles more negative than reality has been. And to be fair, the Northern Ireland situation is not really something that has a precedent and can be planned for in a way that would satisfy anybody. -
I wouldn't defend the FIFA/ Madden/ CoD annual releases as being consumer friendly- though ultimately, it is the consumers' choice to buy annual releases which encourages them- but they do at least consistently work. The issue with Paradox is usually that they add stuff and accumulate bugs andor imbalanced gameplay as a result of adding stuff, then don't get around to fixing all the stuff they broke before releasing the next dlc, that breaks more stuff. So the net effect is that the games accumulate bugs and broken systems. Don't worry; Mods Will Fix It! seems to be their ultimate attitude. That's apart from the usual accusations more common to dlc in general that they parcel up systems that should have been in the base game to sell later. As for Imperator being on GOG, it's good news but I'd be very reticent about Paradox's approach since they seem to be intent on gating at least extras through their own portal- and they retroactively trojaned steam into the 'drm free' version of CK2 as well.
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Apex is same universe as Titanfall as well, isn't it? Definitely looks like at most it was genre shift of a genuine TF3 project, most likely though it was people presuming it was Titanfall 3 being worked on when it was Apex all the time. Despite having pretty good reputations neither of the Titanfall games sold all that well so some sort of shift was always on the cards. Seems to have been fairly well received too. I have no interest in BR games at all but a million players inside a day seems decent for a title that dropped completely randomly on a moderate sized platform- and it seems to have a decent rep for its monetisation model as well.
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At this point I'm actively hoping they go the whole hog and actually make her a retroactive villain. She's definitely got the background set up for it, and it would give the flash forwards an actual point too. Apart from the nuking there's also the soliciting torture from an identity thief impersonating an important judicial official and breaking a terrorist out of federal custody in S5 either of which would usually make you an outright bad guy. Kind of funny how she's been treated on the other shows. She was always better written on Flash since she wasn't the showrunners' pet, but we got a passive aggressive comment about her wedding gift after the hijacking which was almost certainly designed as a WTF? to the Arrow writers; and she was summarily and fairly graphically killed off in Legends' Doomworld.
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IIRC straight sequel to K1 (and largely ignoring K2), primarily if not entirely SP. It got retasked to an MMO very early on though; and LucasArts were developing a K3 internally which was cancelled a year before TOR released.
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What We Do In the Shadows TV trailer (mirror, since the official FX one is region locked) Looks more a straight TV adaptation of the movie than Wellington Paranormal was.
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As knobish as hijacking a friend's wedding was to make it all about her she did also literally nuke a city which is probably a bit above omelettes and monomaniacal narcissism. Havenrock, never forget; unlike Felicity who forgot about it the same episode. While Arrow isn't exactly Shakespeare at the best of times she really has been a dreadfully written pet character. Objectively she's written as (at very best) deeply deeply selfish, if not an outright sociopath yet you're meant to like her...
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Not so sure about that in this case. Derp Silver are now themselves owned by THQ Nordic, if they don't like what DS does with their managerial independence then said independence could be pulled. And since Nordic has deliberately cultivated a relatively distributor agnostic and 'neutral' approach over the past few years I cannot see them being overly happy with a controversial exclusivity deal.
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10 minutes plus -> higher monetisation tier.
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That was because I watched Daredevil S1 before it and both shows made a big deal of their villains randomly eating omelettes in their beautifully appointed penthouse suites. Didn't help that Titans was clearly very much a post Daredevil show when it came to its general approach to things like violence and production values as well- as compared to Gotham/ CW shows/ Krypton etc.
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Finished Titans. It was OK, not as good as it was made out to be and at times oddly derivative (bad guy makes omelettes) and a bit... tepid as if they were worried about going all out with stuff. Also did not like where it ended, don't think they should have cut the last episode. OTOH had to laugh at STD's latest episode's
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The Political Thread - Browncoat edition... down with the Alliance!
Zoraptor replied to Gorth's topic in Way Off-Topic
The Aegis Ashore system is in Romania, which isn't close to Kaliningrad. The Polish system isn't operational yet. ...or SS-N-30 launch from a Kilo-submarine of the Black Sea Fleet. Either which way both Aegis Ashore facilities are fixed sites, which make them poor platforms for offensive weapons. They're fine for a first strike weapon though, which is exactly what the Russians say about them. Yeah, there are other options for first strike weapons as well but everyone always wants more options and, to be frank, those bases make basically no sense for their stated purpose either- missile defence against Iran and DPRK, set up in Poland? That the Russians should just take the US's word for it that they won't be used as such would be moronic and naive, pinky swearing that they won't be used as such is trumped utterly by the signed treaty stating outright that the launchers should not exist in the first place. As for nuclear tomahawks, the 109G existed so the warhead and system is already designed. Indeed, the W84 nuclear warhead from the 109G definitively existed as late as 2011. I guess they could have been scrapped in the intervening 7 years; but that seems fundamentally unlikely if they hadn't in the previous 24, and since the US has been gearing up to drop INF since at least 2014. Depends if they're actually violating airspace or not. The vast majority of airspace 'violations' on both sides aren't actually violations but intruder runs or intelligence gathering and just getting close to the airspace (except around northern Estonia, where both sides violate airspace more commonly due to the complex situation). If you're actually violating airspace you tend to get a more overtly aggressive response than responding to someone coming close which is typically just an escort and photo op. Collisions do happen though, there was that Chinese jet that crashed into the US spy plane off Hainan for example though whose fault that was has not been independently verified. If I were to be facetious, NATO responds by shooting down intruders well after they've left their airspace and blatantly lying about the circumstances while their buddies run post facto interference for them (Turkish radar data showing a Su24 cruising at ~250kph, pull the other one it's got bells on)- but really, that was just Erdogan thinking he'd get in with the cool kids. -
The Political Thread - Browncoat edition... down with the Alliance!
Zoraptor replied to Gorth's topic in Way Off-Topic
Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty. It isn't as recent a withdrawal (Bush jr era) -
The Political Thread - Browncoat edition... down with the Alliance!
Zoraptor replied to Gorth's topic in Way Off-Topic
The Aegis Ashore system is in Romania, which isn't close to Kaliningrad. The Polish system isn't operational yet. It doesn't matter if it makes zero sense to put tomahawks in the Aegis Ashore launchers, if you can, and if they are land based then they're simply non compliant with INF and the US is in breach. It's trivial to put nukes back on tomahawks and I'd bet pretty much everything that that is exactly what will happen- not that it matters with respect to the INF, since as previous land based launchers are exactly as illegal as missiles of any type. After all, the US had BM109Gs and Pershing IIs for a reason up to 1987, same as the USSR had their versions. Mostly though, this is about blaming the Russians so it doesn't look like it's the US unilaterally bailing on yet another agreement after ABM, Paris and Iran. And what is good for the goose is also good for the gander. If it makes little sense for the US it also makes little sense for the Russians. Their country and nuclear arsenal is large enough that they can just fire ICBMs at everyone and anyone without abrogating the treaty, quite apart from their own air/ naval cruise and ballistic missiles. And despite the US being clearly in breach at very very least exactly as much as the Russians- and in terms of the provable, a whole lot more- it isn't the Russians threatening to withdraw, it's the US.