Zoraptor

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...)

People said Trump was ineptly dishonest from the moment he started running. His strategy has worked pretty well since then, despite the criticism. It seems rather an odd strategy to me as well, but you can't really argue results and so far the results have been tremendous, the best results. Thing is, people won't remember the details. Commentators may, and journalists may, but people in general won't. What they will remember is that Trump wanted to stop terrorism, and that it was in the news for ages, and that [people] stopped him doing so. When the next terrorist attack happens- as it will- that is what will be remembered. They won't remember that the Bowling Green massacre never happened, that's detail which keeps the main issue in the headlines. The people who remember such things are never going to support Trump anyway (or are so committed they'll never stop supporting him). By and large you can tell when they aren't doing stoking controversy deliberately, because they then try and kill the story rather than double down. Things like Conway's 'buy Ivanka' are not intended, keeping terrorism in the news is though as it's political insurance in case there is an attack- Trump tried to do something about it- and political ammunition to fire at his opponents too. As strategies go it's fine, albeit somewhat... unpleasant since you're effectively waiting for an attack to happen to have it pay off, but you do get some benefit from it anyway.

Yeah, Mateen himself said he was doing it for and pledged allegiance to, ISIS so there was a link there; and he knew about the death of a reasonably obscure ISIS leader. The CIA said they found no evidence that ISIS knew about him, but they didn't rule out a link either, only said they found no evidence. The FBI also found no evidence that he was a semi repressed homosexual or using Grindr etc either, which was widely reported as being the 'real'/ alternative motive. If reports he was linked (other than self professed) to ISIS are alternative facts/ fake news then so was anything using the repressed homosexual angle. I'm always suspicious of 'x said he did this for y reason, but really he did this for z reason' with no evidence provided for reason z. At least there's his confession for reason y and he showed some knowledge on the subject. I seldom agree with WoD but this definitely ain't alternative facts, not even close.

That's a bit harsh on Muhammed Sahid al Sahaf. He'd have been literally shot if he went off script. Wasn't like those under Bush or Obama were any good either. All press secretaries are awful- it's in the nature of their job to be terrible, they have to lie, obfuscate, embiggen, spin and generally be untrustworthy- and the Bush/ Obama ones at least had the advantage of a more orthodox approach from their boss, and a far less overtly hostile press- even term 2 Bush. Then again, when I see 'alternative facts' I know that it isn't a new phenomenon- Obama's PR blithely defended the murder of civilians with drones, massaged the numbers, 'forgot' to include a significant number of them in stats (only for them to be rediscovered once he left office) etc. Sure, that's different from Spicer overestimating the numbers at Trump's inauguration, Obama's underestimation of the number of civilians he killed was greater than Spicer's overestimation and was referring to people actually dying as opposed to turning up to be bored by politicians talking for hours.

The Flash is too repetitive. At the moment it's probably the worst of the CW hero shows. I was prepared to be disappointed with The Expanse S2, since I liked S1 a lot and that usually means expectations get set too high. This time, I wasn't disappointed. Plus it's nice to see Ashur from Spartacus and Ula from Shortland Street again, though she's probably a bit young for the character she's playing.

I'd suspect at this point most would know him better as Tom Zarek in the remake rather than Apollo in the original. Probably more effective as a villain than any of the cylons, and if he and Gaeta had flushed all the self righteous gits out of an airlock in S4 I would have cheered.

PoE1 works fine on an e6400, which is even older and slower than an e7400. For that matter so does DivinityOS. Indeed, the OP's computer is positively modern compared to mine (e6400, 4GB RAM (but 32 bit motherboard so like 3.25 available), 1GB 5770). On the positive side, my 10 year old hard disk is in better condition than 99.99% of its contemporaries last time I checked. Waiting on (Ry)Zen to release, then I'll get a new computer, promise.

You have to add postage and packaging/ shipping to that as well.

I don't really know why they'd bother putting a few MB of steam installer onto a dvd in a box either. I understand doing that with retail copies as that's how EB and any physical publisher makes their money (and they're often cheaper than digital copies too). I don't really 'get' collecting though, I tend to think that if you're buying a physical tier you want to open the box and get everything out rather than have it sitting on a shelf- otherwise it might as well be empty. I also wouldn't pay well above the odds +P/P to get a box, but plenty of collectors are willing to hence the popularity of the high $ physical/ collectors editions I guess.