Zoraptor

Those rumours have been around for ages. To be honest they're pretty likely to be true, especially if the new movies are off limits to EA and they aren't really doing that much with the licence otherwise apart from Battlefront. As for romances, I'd probably settle for Ithorians since they're in KOTOR already. Though I'd be thinking of Ishi Tib or Lepi (don't judge me, please) I should have picked a Rik Mayall as Lord Flashheart avatar instead of Alan B'Stard. Replacing Obi Wan with Flash would immensely improve the prequels. Though to be fair, replacing just about any character with Flash would improve anything. And make it far shorter.

The 2% spending figure is for 2024 and is not a requirement now. No matter how much money Raytheon and pals spends on fluff opinion pieces and donations to John McCain types. In any case, an arbitrary requirement is mostly there as corporate welfare rather than as a sensible approach, because any actual conflict involving NATO where 2% spending matters ends with an Ink Spots song and Ron Perlman narration.

Have you heard the tragedy of Bioware, the EA division? I thought not, it's not a story John Riccitiello would tell you. It's a gaming legend. Bioware was a gaming studio so large and so influential it could use its previous titles to influence EA to authorise expenditure… It had such a knowledge of gaming that it could even keep itself from being Bullfrogged/ OSIed/ Maxied/ Westwooded. It could actually save itself from being disbanded? Sales success is a pathway to abilities many consider... unlikely. What happened to them? It became so powerful… the only thing it was afraid of was losing its audience appeal, which eventually, of course, it did. Unfortunately, it subsumed itself in pet causes, bad romances, SPMMO gameplay and poor testing, and eventually its master will kill them in their sleep. Ironic. It could avoid being assimilated, but still ended up a typical EA studio anyway. Is it possible to avoid these pitfalls? Only for an independent studio.

She did, but the UN ambassador position has no actual power and is used (by basically everyone) for hatchet jobbing each other, the only dependant part is who is hatcheting whom at different times and on different issues. Samantha Power did exactly the same thing and said exactly the same things, nothing actually came of it. The US won't fight Russia unless they have to, and if they tried that they'd have to. We've also been told the strike is a one off, and that the US won't themselves remove Assad from power by people like McMaster and Tillerson who are far higher food chain than Haley. If it's Turkey andor Saudi & rebels vs Syria and Russia it's the latter who wins, every time. Saudi loses pathetically to shoeless Houthis and Turkey, well, they were just told that they weren't wanted for the Raqqa campaign because they were too crap. The US will try and leverage Assad out via Russia and try and block Iran off from western Syria with 'their' rebels (indeed, they already tried exactly that last year though they lost rather badly) and that's about it- unless something else changes, or they're bonkers.

I can't do anything other than gape at the stupidity of people who believe that "doing it right this time" with the same old regime change recipe is even a remote possibility. Have you been in a coma these last 20 years? If they are going to do it (they aren't, most likely) then there's no harm hoping they do it properly. But yeah, the fundamental problem is that militant salafi jihadism with its philosophy fundamentally rooted in the 7th century and secular moderate democracy are not miscible concepts, and the one passably secular democratic group won't fight for western Syria. So you can't get secular democracy, and if you're not going to get secular democracy you pretty much have to settle for the 1/2 that Assad gives rather than the 0/2 the rebels do. At this point if they could get zombie Gaddafi back (Haftar was a top Gaddafi general, for those who don't know) with a new face and new name they'd take him. Haven't learned anything about trusting Saudi and Qatar though, and that's the fundamental problem since their reliance on retrograde salafi/ wahhabi states infects every decision the US makes in the ME every bit as much as their obsession with doing what Israel wants. But that's not the best feasible solution for Israel or for Saudi or Qatar or Turkey though. It's just the best solution for Syria, and we can safely say that, to mildly paraphrase the great philosopher Kanye, "Trump doesn't care about Syrian people". The issue at the moment is that Assad is winning, and perhaps winning fast enough to prevent the Euphrates Valley being blocked to Iran and ISIS still hasn't taken Deir Ez Zor despite US help (!) in doing so. The US knows perfectly well that the strongest rebel factions outside the Kurds are literal headchopping salafi jihadis (x2) and literally Al Qaeda and that it isn't in their interests to let them win- it just isn't in their interests to let them lose. Same reason Israel has Al Qaeda (!) and ISIS (!!) next to the Golan Heights and actively protects them. If the US cannot get the whole country then the end game involves balkanisation and perpetuation of the current status quo, not an actual solution.

They had a public bet over the result of the election. (Some forums do have a ban on For Attention Of posts, unless I missed it this one doesn't; and the relevant thread is well and truly locked)

That's not necessarily the case- all we know is WB challenged the trademark filing at the USPTO and ND withdrew it. The potential problems with the developer and publisher being bought by different entities (Monolith--> WB; Fox--> Vivendi--> Activision) and the IP maybe being split and hence difficult to re-release as a consequence still exists, all that is now known is that WB claims part of it. They still may or may not own all of it, and may or may not be willing to license to someone. To be fair to Warners they're a massive company, if some no name was asking for information on an obscure and not particularly successful game from the early 2000s not treating it seriously is understandable; as is getting annoyed when they decide to fish for a response. The group that Night Dive dealt with over System Shock was a bank/ insurer (Meadowbrook Bank/ Star Insurance) used to selling off seized collateral by the nature of their business.

If it's that easy to distinguish aircraft there wouldn't be friendly fire incidents, would there. It's just not that easy, except in theory. There were also other Ukrainian planes used in theatre both before and after MH17, eg MiG29s from ~five weeks earlier in 2014 and the two Mig29s that Ukraine officially claim as shot down were in August 2014. Ukraine mostly using Su25 is only important because that would influence what a contact had set as preliminary identifications, they clearly were using other planes in the region as well, just not as much since an air superiority fighter has little utility in that context. Ukraine also accused Russia of launching air to air attacks on its planes literally the previous day, as such having their own proper fighters in the area is eminently plausible. As for flim flam razzle dazzle, the Russians gain literally nothing from claiming it was a Su25 as opposed to a Mig29 there.

It was strongly implied that ND couldn't get anyone to even check that they owned the NOLF rights. So they went for the trademark (which is pretty cheap to apply for) to see who if anyone would block them. IIRC it was Warners, and they were sufficiently unhappy about that approach that there's no chance of ND getting the rights- and odd as it may seem something like System Shock being successfully relaunched makes it less likely that the rights would be sold outright, at least. There have been rumours of GOG working on NOLF compatibility but I'd be sceptical of that until there's better evidence that isn't basically wishful thinking.

They (ND) tried trademarking the name. It didn't go well.

Bro, that wikilink doesn't even say that you can reliably identify planes by radar alone, now, except in theory. Yeah, there are suites to give them likely designations and have been for ages but those are nowhere near infallible or you wouldn't get any of the friendly fire incidents that happened in Gulf War 2 well after the 80s nor other unintended targetings like MH17 (or IranAir655, albeit that was the 80s). Even more recently than 2003 the Russians supposedly shot down 2 of their own Su24s during the Ossetia War because they mistook them for Georgian Su25s- and Georgia didn't even have Su24s (or anything supersonic, iirc). Mostly though, having it tagged as an Su25 is the least of the problems with that story. The fundamental problem is that it is pretty definitively a SAM that hit MH17, and that was always the most likely explanation with being shot down air to air possible, but unlikely. An incorrect type attribution is far more likely than Russians deliberately picking- almost literally- the only combat plane which is incapable of shooting down an airliner for their alternative explanation.

That ship was already on its way, it was at/ near the Bosporus when the attack happened. If the Pyotr Veliky goes back that would be significant, as it's a meat wagon and was far more significant than the Kuznetsov (carrier) being there, this is just normal schedule most likely. Bloody useless experts everywhere. The Russian story was bollocks, but the Su25 'debunking' is as bad a bit of false information as anything they did. (Why? Radar designations are preliminary since you cannot identify a target by radar alone, obviously if you could then MH17 wouldn't have itself been shot down as it would not have been mistaken for an Il76. Nor would IranAir655 have been mistaken for an F14. To put it in perspective, a Su25 is very similar size to Su27 and Mig29 which could easily shoot an airliner down, an airbus is multiple orders of magnitude larger than an F14 yet Scott Lustig still identified said Airbus as an F14 for which, lest we forget, he literally got a medal. The Su25 designation could have easily as been for said Su27 or Mig29 as an actual Su25, and again, either of those is more than capable of shooting down any airplane. It didn't happen, but their reasoning in debunking it is itself a load of old tosh)

Russians said that a weapons depot was hit, and that it contained CW. While there are issues with that explanation it would explain there being 2 CW agents present despite all sources saying only one potential CW bomb was dropped (you can't just bung sarin and chlorine in together, they're both reactive and have differing physical properties, it's actively counterproductive). There's also no pictures whatsoever of the delivery device. At this point you, and the US, are basically taking the word of Hayat Tahrir al Sham- Al Qaeda- as to the facts. Rebels have even used sarin before, in Khan al Assal (as mentioned in the politics thread the US explanation for that is, near literally, 'they gassed themselves for the lulz'). You realise that even if one accepts the claim that only 23 targets were hit, common targeting procedure is to double (or even triple or quadruple, depending on target priority) up on munitions against one target for redundancy's sake (in the event defenders are attempting to intercept the missiles, or in case of weapon failure)? Or that many cruise missiles, particularly when used against hardened targets, detonate post-penetration so showing the exterior of a hangar after the strike may be misleading? 23 missiles, not 23 targets. Best evidence so far is that 16 targets were hit, which fits 23 missiles pretty well. There's also plenty of ground level photos available showing undamaged planes sitting in undamaged armoured hangars, from ground level, and the airfield was/ is back in use with planes taking off/ landing scant hours later. Don't think there's any credible argument for the strikes being effective if they've resume use the morning of the bombing. The only real argument is whether they were deliberately ineffective or not.

Claims are that only 40% (23) of the tomahawks reached the airbase, and from the (lack of) damage to Shayrat that's pretty credible. There's literally no apparent damage to the runway (!) and many of the armoured hangars are intact as well. Exactly why so few arrived is a bit of an open question since Russia said they launched no counter missiles, so some sort of ECM seems likely (GPS spoofing, maybe). There's some limited drone footage of the base post strikes, though it's potato quality. Unsurprisingly there's a lot of talk of Syria getting S3/400 SAM systems now, and the air coordination agreement between the Russians and US is suspended.

It will probably be the exact reverse, which is even sadder. If everyone withdrew support the war would have been over by now, one way or the other. As it is Iran and Russia will up support to prevent any repetition and as a FU to Saudi/ Israel in Iran's case; US et alia will up support for Al Qaeda and friends as well as the Kurds. You can probably expect something like Shia militia from Iraq entering Syria (in larger numbers/ attacking up the Euphrates instead of helping around Mosul) in response, which will make things even more volatile.

Probably better to have a separate topic rather than clog up the Politics thread. I'll even edit in some links later. Attack was on Shayrat military base which is in Homs governate, southwesteast proof read you numpty of the city. 59 tomahawk missiles launched from ships in the med were used. Russians were apparently informed an hour before (which fits with them issuing a warning not to do it), but had no input on the decision. Lots of rumours floating around (Bannon has resigned in protest etc) at this point, and no confirmed reports of damage. Doubt very much more will come of it though, at least at this stage. Maybe the Pyotr Veliky will go to Latakia again and Assad will get some free pantsirs. Definitely no UN resolution will be passed now. Beeb. Al Jazeera. RT. Plus the best general map of the situation overall. Wikipedia based, so grain of salt, but it's more reliable than any other.

Yeah, I remembered that you disagree with it at the time and I'd normally agree with your objections and do on a philosophical level, but I don't really see an alternative especially in retrospect. The bondholders would have got basically nothing if GM had folded- their assets were effectively worthless even with the atypically generous US bankruptcy provisions as their financial arm was laden with bad debt and obligations, and their core business had huge oversupply/ wrong vehicle supply issues compounded by the difficulty of their potential customers getting credit to buy their product. You're not going to get much, potentially nothing at all, for their factories when there's a car glut and few people able to buy and you'd obliterate the value of the GM marque at a stroke since there would be no certainly about things like warrantees. They needed, effectively, a blank cheque while they got their house in order- and the general economic chaos was somewhat brought under control- and there was only one entity able to give them that. I wouldn't shed many tears for the banking/ financial institution side bondholders who held a large majority of GM's debt. While they lost a lot of money, in theory, they were (and still were up until fairly recently) able to borrow money at literally 0% interest from the government themselves. That rather cushions the blow. Little guys got screwed, of course, but such is life. In a purely theoretical situation I'd have let them fail as well, in the practical situation though a GM folding would have also destroyed all their independent suppliers, an AIG folding would have screwed all the people covered by their policies, another bank failing would have screwed yet more banks etc. As such I can't really criticise the approach taken at the time. They just should have used the opportunity and leverage to make sure that it couldn't happen again, which they've singularly failed to do.

In one sense many of the big businesses are already practically nationalised and the situation is similar to taxpayers being a guarantor on their mortgage without having a share of the title deed- too big to fail/ privatise profits and socialise losses etc. I know you don't agree with that sort of set up either, but practically that is what the situation is and there have been no real attempts to stop it from happening again. The taxpayer effectively has ownership obligations without the ownership benefits. You also can nationalise without doing so at gunpoint, indeed that was exactly what happened to multiple companies in multiple countries around 2008 (partly including GM, iirc). If the alternative is the company literally going bankrupt then the government buying out stock is an advantage to the shareholder, not a disadvantage, since without the government their stock would be near worthless.

Review bombing definitely happened, it happens for all sorts of reasons. Nevertheless, the SoD character was not generally defended by actual trans people- indeed, many seemed to think Beamdog's approach trivialised the issue as much as Hainly in MEA- but by the Polygons and Kotakus of the world. The response from actual trans people seems to be fairly similar to the two characters, the press response and review bombing accusations publicised the issue in SoD's case and made it look like it was only an issue for 4chan types. For MEA, Bioware has not doubled down on the issue and blamed 4chan (even though they have done that before). Personally I'm of the opinion that such issues are almost always insultingly trivialised in gaming media, and like most things should be avoided unless you're actually going to do them well instead of as a once over lightly for 'political' reasons. Using a long hibernation sleep to transition is actually a pretty good concept, but if you aren't going to do it justice then just don't do it at all.

I don't think the actual trans community was particularly pleased with how SoD handled the issue either, and for much the same reasons. In that case it tended to be the usual suspects in the press defending it, and largely because Beamdog blamed antiSJW neckbeards/ 4chan/ gamergate for review bombing the game, which got it mileage.

You can only playtest what is put in front of you anyway. For all anyone knows the playtesters were all over the problems and produced a beautifully formatted and indexed triplicate hard copy and database bug report collection that already listed every problem so far detected. If their suggestions/ observations were either ignored or not able to be acted on then they might as well have not existed. It's difficult to believe that someone didn't catch the problem with animations for example. It's far more likely that they were not a high enough priority or there was not enough time to fix them then that testers thought they were fine. Have to say though, I'm vaguely looking forward to playing Andromeda at some point, despite its problems.

Pretty sure everyone is sick of global powers taking dumps in regions except said global powers. In the mess that is the SCW it's not actually impossible that the rebels manufacture chemical weapons for ISIS, especially in the specific regional context. Liwa (formerly Jund) al Aqsa was the group that previously held Khan Sheiktoun, and they've (literally) joined ISIS having previously and temporarily joined Al Qaeda/ Al Nusra (Hayat Tahrir al Sham, formally). There are still extensive links between LAA and HTS and LAA has, despite having a thousand or so members, disappeared completely so far as anyone can tell. Plus HTS apart from literally being Al Qaeda was also literally ISIS up until Feb 2014. So rebels supplying ISIS with CW is probably bollocks, but not certainly so especially if they were meant to supply LAA. HTS/ AQ also gets a lot of 'Friends of Syria' (NATO/ Gulf States) sourced supplies as they control the supply routes, and whether NATO acknowledges it or not. They're the best supplied rebel force in Syria- by a fair margin- despite theoretically being embargoed by everyone. There has been at least one occasion in which the rebels very likely used sarin in an attack- on government held Khan al Assal in 2013. In an interesting reversal, the official western position is that it was the government gassing people on their own side that time. That was primarily on a military target though and killed more soldiers than civilians, for what that's worth.

Eh, they'd just drop conventional bombs if they wanted to randomly kill lots of people, same as anyone else would. If you don't have an air force you go to some village and shoot it up semi randomly as our SAS did when the Taleban killed an NZ soldier; plus it'd be a weird way to strike back at an ISIS inspired Kyrgyz with no other apparent link to Syria anyway. Mostly though, the rebels say that the chemical bomb/ missile was dropped by a Su22 which Russia hasn't operated for years and nobody suggests they have in Syria. If the rebel story is accurate it was definitely Syria rather than Russia. I'd be reticent about assigning blame at this point anyway, apart from it being pretty stupid to potentially provoke intervention and utterly pointless militarily, MSF have said that two chemical agents were present with the second probably being chlorine or a similar derivative. That definitely means that there was either more than the one chemical bomb claimed by witnesses or a secondary source on the ground.

Yeah, if you're anti Trump you fixate on the term 'wire tap' and the claim of Obama himself ordering it directly, both of which are highly unlikely, and ignore the broader meaning. If you're pro Trump you instead look at the broad meaning of the tweet rather than the details. In that broad meaning Trump is clearly- and always was, for anyone who has read Snowden's or wikileaks' stuff- correct that he and his campaign were being monitored by the US government, but his details are not credible. Which is pretty typical Trump really, he's often right in the broad sense with bad details, or vice versa. It is somewhat amusing to see the same newspapers that have been publishing huge numbers of articles 'sourced from anonymous members of the intelligence community' then claim that Trump wasn't 'wire tapped'- because there was no physical device applied to his land line. It is technically true, of course.

I feel that someone should at least Correct The Record on where the term 'Bernie Bros' came from. Ideally, someone should get the Senate Committee to visit /pol/ if they really want to know where most of the anti Hillary memes came from. That, at least, would be good for a laugh. (Good lord that article is appallingly bad. Certainly does nothing to dispel the notion that there's a massive, and distinctly non Russian, psyop going on)