Zoraptor

Any list without AP is suspect. Yeah, gameplay is janky but things like being an unprofessional smart arse dressed in full body armour while meeting Marburg and watching him come to the boil are some of the best actual role playing and dialogue in any game- though of course most won't actually see that on a first play through. The reactivity is minor in most practical respects but the overall impression of reactivity won't be beaten too soon. Speaking of too soon, that thread title...

East End of London hated Bobby Peel's original police force. Most of the negative names for the police in english originate from there.

It's easy for so many to confuse 'credible' news sources with conmen largely (but not only) because you have passionate, biased reporters. Reporters too are people, and they suffer the exact same series/ ranges of fallacies from scenario fulfilment to cognitive dissonance that lead the average Joe to believe fake news, they just get to put theirs down into print and be taken with some intrinsic, but declining, authority. Passion and bias should stay exactly where it belongs, in opinion columns or reddit/ forums/ usenet/ facebook etc- and out of the news. Too much opinion in news doesn't result in better information, it results in precisely what we have now, declining confidence in the entire idea of actual news, one side ignores the other sides' news because it's 'biased', and vice versa. Passionate, biased reporters are easy to discredit because they almost always fall into a range from selectively reporting to constructively dishonestly reporting because their passion and bias- and being human- means that they believe what fits their world view and ignore what doesn't. You then only have to point out what they have ignored, or their selectiveness, or their lies/ mistakes and you've discredited them with a proportion of their user base. Since most people reading a news source agree with its editorial bias- pretty obvious- that proportion which becomes disillusioned ends up not trusting either their own sides press or the opposition's. So, they look for alternative sources of information, usually still on their own 'side' but do it enough and hey presto, you've discredited the whole idea of news. Ironically, that's the (supposed) aim of entities like RT, which they couldn't do it without the help of those passionate, biased reporters feeding them juicy examples to deconstruct. Passionate, biased reporters give bad analysis and colour their stories because they report on what they want to be true, not what is, and are the cancer that is killing real news far more than fake news- which is, after all, fake; and people get disillusioned with mainstream media for a reason, not just because they're stoopid.

lolwut, Paradox had yearly conventions. Oh, non press only conventions. Actually, I thought they'd done one of those earlier as well.

I might have thought that Vals would at least have some appreciation for Hurt, 1984 and V for Vendetta would seem to be right up his alley, philosophically speaking and as warnings, at least.

If you're not going to count an action that was (supposedly at least) ordered by the head of state to be performed, by an organ of state, as a state action you aren't going to count anything done by that state as being a state action. By the same logic nothing done in Syria by Russians is state action, since it's done by individual Russians who happen to be employed by the Russian state and who are, ultimately but seemingly irrelevantly, obeying Putin's orders. And that would be odd, as the US (andor politicians thereof) have spent rather a lot of time going on about Russia this and Russia that as if Russia is responsible for those 'state actions'. If the FSB/ GRU does a hack in the US, on Putin's orders, then it is a state action- Putin is the head of state and the FSB is as much an organ of state as the Russian air force or army is, or the CIA/ FBI/ Army is in the US . The situation is completely different if the FSB or people within it are doing their hacks or leaks freelance, because that is not state sanctioned as it has not been ordered by the state. Indeed it's quite the opposite, if they're trying to blackmail their head of state. In any case, if you want to show that illegality occurred, committed by specific people you can't simply assert it and use that as fact, and neither can the US. Yep, it's easy for the US to fire off accusations that will never actually be tested, but one cannot use those accusations as anything more than as a basis for what the 'US' thinks happened and who did it.

By international agreements that Russia has signed, legality hacking that targets computers in USA is determined by USA laws. Which of course don't necessary mean much as Russia isn't in habit giving its citizens to USA to be tried. Nah, not if it's the Russian State doing it. Even for private citizens extradition itself requires the crime to be illegal in Russia as well, albeit that can be waived. The direct equivalent would be Russia saying that CIA hacking in Russia is illegal. Well yeah, it may be in Russia, but it isn't a crime in the US and there isn't merely no chance of an extradition whatever reciprocal treaties may say there's no chance of, well, anything except incredulous laughter if they complained about it. It's also particularly problematic when you have the NSA rather obviously hacking/ intercepting the Russian Ambassador's communications- completely against the Vienna Convention, of course, but you'd be naive if you thought it didn't happen. Well, if all the intelligence communities want is a compliant leader who does what they want I guess it's all good then? If one were to be facetious one might mention that all Putin wants is a compliant leader who does what he wants, as well... That kind of thinking is far more sinister than Trump being a blowhard, because Trump is both limited in power and is an actual elected official who will be gone in 4/8 years. These guys are neither elected nor are they limited in their power or in the time frame of their power. You don't get any less limited than trying to kneecap your country's leader as there isn't any higher target to go for. And if they get away with it once they'll do it every single time, it can hardly be claimed they'd stop at the President either since- and I know I'm repeating myself- there is no greater target to go for. (I don't give an asterisk if Putin tried interfering here, that's expected and the best defence to that is having a proper democracy where his potential influence never rises above margin of error level. If our spies tried interfering though? I'd have a hard time describing that as anything less than a clandestine coup and outright treason, and would be tempted to suggest actual hanging for anyone caught doing it, pour decourager les autres. Hi GCSB/ SIS, hope you enjoyed my post)

It isn't illegal for Russia to hack the DNC, as Russia isn't bound by US laws. Same as it isn't/ wasn't illegal for the US to 'promote homosexuality' just because that is illegal in Russia. Won't stop the US from trying to impose their laws, of course, but Russia's response is and would be that the US can go asterisk themselves same as the US would tell Russia if they tried to enforce their anti gay laws in the US. And if it were Rich doing the leaking then it may have been illegal- far more difficult to prove it though, since he had legit access to the info- but it certainly wasn't hacking, or treason. As for the rest, you're trying to make Trump a special case. If Schumer or Pelosi were appalled!!! at the DNC/ Hillary leaks and are smugly parroting the current ones that is every bit as undermining as Trump doing it, and every bit as undermining as Obama saying he supported whistle blowers then prosecuting more than all other Presidents combined (iirc) under the espionage act. Truth is that everyone loves a leak that benefits them, and is appalled!!! at a leak that doesn't. Trump is no special case there, he's absolutely par for the course. I don't really see how it makes it easier for intelligence communities to influence either. They're going to do it because they want Trump gone, have the power to, the only people who can stop them rely on them for the information needed to stop them and there's no prospect of the media refusing to print unsupported leaks they agree with. Trump being a hypocrite about supporting/ opposing leaks is a parallel issue that is only likely to be significant to those who already don't like him- same as the D hypocrisy is only significant to those who don't like them.

While I don't really want to get tied up in the minutiae of camel farms in Sweden and other such things Daily Sabah is an abysmally bad newspaper. It won't take a metaphorical crap without written in triplicate approval from Erdogan. Well yeah, and you have the people who were appalled!!! at the Hillary/ DNC leaks who are cheering the current leaks on. Plenty of hypocrisy to go around there, if the circumstances were equivalent, which they aren't. There's a big difference between Hillary/ DNC stuff being leaked by someone be it the mysteriously, unsolvedly, murdered Seth Rich or Vladimir Putin wearing a Groucho Marx moustache as it was information from a private institution to which the leaker either had legit access in Rich or was part of a hack by a 3rd party state which has no obligation to respect US laws. In the current case(s) it's both clear political meddling by, effectively, a state institution (individuals within, but you'd suspect that the leakers could be caught were it a priority for the leadership) against the political leadership of said state and is also illegal leaking of classified material in many cases. The overwhelming impression is that the 'intelligence community' doesn't want to share with Trump not because they think he's a security risk but because they want to monopolise the ability to leak and limit it to anti Trump stuff. They've been leaking like a sieve for the past couple of months, after all. Anyone and everyone should be concerned about the intelligence community influencing politics. Their power over the general population and politicians is an order of magnitude greater than any influence Russia could possibly have even in McCain and Graham's worst nightmare (or Raytheon et al think tanks' push marketing, at least).

Yeah, same studio, same engine. The engine for T3 had been much improved over DXIW though, T3 could scarcely have been made with levels of IW's size. I can't really give an objective reason for liking T3 (kind of) and disliking DXIW though, it's just one of those things where everything about DXIW was off from what I wanted, and while T3 was far from perfect I could at least appreciate the effort that went in and get enjoyment from what did work.

Arkane were working on an actual System Shock game a decade ago, John Riccitiello killed it when he got appointed. Using 'Prey' for this game smacks of someone wanting to cover their arse for paying for the IP and then shopping it between multiple studios for years with at least one aborted effort (Human Head's) ending in PR disaster. At this point it's either release a game or admit failure permanently shelve the IP. Apologies to Shady and WoD, but DXIW was terrible, the only game I've both completed and thought was worthless after completing- next closest is NWN, Bioware version, where I ended the pain early though not in retrospect early enough. I didn't like anything about it, I didn't even like that it had an end to the torment since it just left a dull aching hole where the warm affection and (some realistic) expectations had been. I played it well after release so my expectations were fairly well tempered in the fire of fan reaction, but I'm still butthurt about it 13 years later. Thief 3, on the other hand, was a genuinely decent game with some problems.

I seem to remember some of the Discworld (game) puzzles being... rather esoteric. I never really liked adventure games due to their 'randomly combine everything you find and use on everything you can think of. Hope you picked up that old newspaper in the first room you need twenty hours later too' nature. I thought of the Pentium Floating Point Error bug. For some reason, since 1+1 ought not to use floating point. Though it does now make me wonder if some puzzle games that relied on maths couldn't be completed on old Pentiums. And reminds me of "I am Pentium of Borg: division is futile you will be approximated" which is good, since someone recently told me memes didn't exist until the 2000s.

You must be clicking, else you wouldn't see the thread in the first place? I spent Valentine's Day having nightmares that romances would be added to PoE2.

Nah, it's still Saudi Arabia. Plenty of incompetent/ malign/ ignorant western interventions outside the ME which haven't resulted in religious extremism. Rwanda, Vietnam, Guatemala etc may have been negatively effected by interventions, but they haven't ended up with the blight of a wahhabi extremism equivalent.

There were plenty of accusations about Halabja implicating Iraq at the time- but Saddam was a friend then. And nobody wanted too strong an examination of where he was getting his chemical weapons infrastructure and supplies from, (most of western Europe and especially Germany) nor where he was getting his intelligence on where to use them (the US). There was a conspiracy to sweep it under the carpet, but it was a standard conspiracy you can see to this day in various places to hide complicity in atrocities and protect someone fighting an enemy; and it certainly wasn't a watertight conspiracy since two UN reports in 1984 and 1986 acknowledged extensive CW usage by Iraq. I'm a suspicious chap by nature, but I doubt that those reports were fabricated to be used 5/7 years later as a casus belli. Saudi Arabia and the cancer of salafi/ wahhabism is the main problem in the ME. Other places aren't as much of a mess despite having similar inherent problems and without the supposed massive benefit of hydrocarbon wealth, and the series of moronic western interventions all have the common Saudi factor.

Theoretically they do have an obligation to be- non ironic usage- fair and balanced plus factual in how they handle the news. If instead they are being hysterical, exaggerating and pandering explicitly to an anti Trump base then they aren't fulfilling that theoretical obligation. Some have already headed towards direct incitement as well. I should probably mention again how much I utterly loathe the use of anonymous sources as the sole basis of news articles, which seems to be the popular methodology for stoking outrage at the moment.

Vox - A conversation with chess champion Garry Kasparov. Meh, US bought the 1996 election for that incompetent drunkard Yeltsin. So they gave Yeltsin one chance and it was the last free election they had as well. Yeah, except, for: Îles des Saintes Marie-Galante la Désirade Martinique Clipperton Island Saint Pierre and Miquelon Saint Martin Saint Bartholemew Mayotte Reunion French Guyana Tahiti New Caledonia I guess I could add all the colonies that the UK still holds as well (such as Diego Garcia, which the UK depopulated in the 60s/70s, to show how enlightened they'd become), but nah.

Also console versions, publisher brought in etc though that was a few months back, and it's well overdue and has had persistent rumours of mismanagement- plus there have been some changes to combat as well and InXile's multiple kickstarters with only one released product has rubbed some people up the wrong way. It's not really like any single change or choice has been major by itself (unless you're Italian, I guess) but it adds up to a somewhat worrisome picture if you wanted a spiritual successor to PST. WL2 had a lot fewer pre release problems and still had a fair few post release ones, so there's reason to be worried there as well, especially since its post console release patch was a bit... polarising.

you can blame theodora the whateverth for that Realistically, worshipping symbols was far too much of a potential and actual money maker for Catholicism not to do it, whatever happened in the east. Though I should really have said in contrast to most sects of Christianity, given you still have Cromwell/ Zwingli iconoclastic Reformed churches; it's just not really relevant to France given its religious make up and its attitude to religious symbolism being rooted in secularism rather than religious dogma.

It does directly effect Sikhs (turban) and Jews (Kippah?) as well as Muslims. The real test would be if wearing a crescent moon and stars or seal of the prophet necklace or similar got banned while a cross didn't. But Muslims don't wear obvious, specifically Muslim decorations since they have a strong aversion to worshipping symbols, in contrast to Christianity.

And sadly it's worse than just that. My current pet peeve is 'anonymous sources claim' in news reports. That's been a staple of opinion pieces for ages but there's more and more bad (practically, non existent) sourcing in actual articles now, as well as supposition masquerading as analysis. Anonymous sources can say literally anything they want, as they have zero responsibility and zero repercussions for what they say and have exactly the same problems that opinion pieces have- low trustworthiness/ no guarantee of accuracy, ability to add bias without consequence, selective reporting etc- while theoretically still being actual news, unlike opinion pieces. 'Anonymous source' articles with no evidence in support are just gossip wearing the trappings of news. Regurgitation and repetition of press releases used to be a problem as well, not so much in the last few weeks since most of the press hates Trump. I just wish they'd report facts and analyse the facts rather than acting as glorified PR/ activists then whining because they don't have credibility any more.

Posting articles from well known and confirmed fascist newspaper the Daily Mail? Why are you reading a commie newspaper, oby_one? Won't be suffering from anaemia any time soon with that dose of irony.

Technically not reporting, since it's a column/ opinion piece rather than a report, per se. Opinion pieces have far less strict editorial controls. I wouldn't defend it or the WaPo though, by and large opinion and especially column authors are picked to toe the editorial line and write stuff the editors/ news reporters cannot get away with; and their articles are often used to 'manufacture consensus' on issues without the publisher having to stand behind what was said. eg all the articles ~2.5 years ago about how Russia would be bankrupt in 6-12 months- all opinion pieces, all designed to appeal to economically ignorant russophobes by telling them what they wanted to hear/ establish a narrative, and now they've been thoroughly debunked nobody wants to take responsibility for believing or writing them. Basically you can write any crap and the paper can disclaim whatever bits are inaccurate as being not the opinion of the paper, while others can take it as gospel from a newspaper of record. Pretty scummy, but an easy and effective way to influence the weak minded.

Hopefully most people can be shifted to the Cain/ Boyarsky project but you'd have to suspect that quite a few won't. AW winding up from an Obsidian perspective can't have been much of a surprise though, and there had already been the earlier reduction in scope. So the article talks about some update but doesn't provide much help in finding it aside from one guy's name? I mean normally they give you a link at least. It's wesp's (ie Werner Spahl, the guy in the article) unofficial patch. They certainly should have given a link, but there aren't that many vtmb mods and many of them require the unofficial patch anyway. Pretty much any search will find it quickly.

Useless spam sucks. Whether it's e-mail, phone, forums, or the release and genre lists at a online stores. It's annoying and it makes it harder to notice actual worthwhile games. Valve's discovery updates have done nothing to help this, they revolve entirely around the UI and their joke of a tag system. If it obfuscates 'worthwhile' titles it pretty much has to be worse than merely useless spam. And Valve's answer to it will be the same as Valve's answer to everything, half arsed and minimal effort. You'd think that with their resources they could do some curation given that GOG does it with a tiny fraction of their resources, but I guess with Valve's supposed structure all their curation bods would suddenly decide they really want to work on Ricochet 2 or some VR fad that nobody wants or Steam Machine DOA and forgotten Project 2.0, and then they'd be back at square one. That's the problem with monopoly positions, no actual incentive to fix problems since there's no viable alternative. If too much noise is the problem a moderate fee will do nothing to stop it and it may get even worse, if too many crap games/ games that don't get finished is the problem it won't fix that either and that too may get worse. And if it's a big fee people have to find 5k extra money to enter a system where their game will still be one sardine in a massive school. (Kind of weird though, the 'big change' involving submitters needing to provide bank details and company paperwork before distributing on Steam. I'm not an accountant and a mere layman in such matters, but I would have thought you'd already need to provide such details before publishing on steam...)