Zoraptor
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Everything posted by Zoraptor
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According to the group that cracked it it's not constant encrypt/ decrypt, just one time encrypt based on hardware keys and then (constant) decrypt which is why hardware changes will lock you out until you reverify. Of course, that it can lock you out until you reverify definitively makes it DRM rather than 'anti tamper' since that behaviour is the same as any other activation based system.
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I said a few months ago that I'd try making cider and I have. So far I've learnt that you don't get much apple juice out a kilo of apples and it's an obnoxious process to get the juice out as well. Next time I'll just bulk it out with (quality) commercial apple juice, much as that offends my food snob side. It's nearly finished fermenting though so I'll probably be bottling tomorrow or saturday morning, then try it maybe around Christmas if I can be that patient. I'd already done one batch of beer as well, will probably go for feijoa wine after the cider is done. I don't actually like feijoas to eat, but they do make a nice wine so long as you don't try drinking it for 3 months (really, I was impatient, tried one early and it tasted like acetone)- plus they're easy to juice since you can freeze them, stick them in a bucket and use a standard potato masher. You can also blend feijoa wine and cider, which is extremely pleasant.
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I don't really understand why it would be a big deal, forums are not a truly public space and you don't 'own' your account. In any case, Chris can't really both drop passive aggressive hints and complain that he's been unfairly locked out; there would be a non negligible chance of something like the character blog being replaced by dongmonster gifs if he weren't. (IIRC Matt Rorie used his old account a fair while after leaving, but I'm not certain and can't be bothered checking) I don't think his 'tone' is at all... constructive, either for him or for Obsidian. For all his positive comments about Bethesda in those interviews he isn't doing himself any favours if he ever does want full time employment again. Companies hate disruptive influences. Trouble is, his style of complaint is something I find symptomatic of the sort of pointless grudge holding that went on at high school. It's entirely possible that things weren't trivial, but if he was doing the passive aggressive hint dropping stuff at Obsidian it would certainly explain why nearly everyone ended up either ignoring or disliking him/ he felt that he was ignored and disliked* as that sort of approach is obnoxious to people just trying to do their job, and it tends towards being a vicious circle where the passive aggressiveness ends up as a persecution complex because people won't support you. And at the moment most of his objectively checkable complaints have not, er, checked out. *he has said he only had one friend at Obsidian, which is both a bit sad but definitely indicates his problems were not just with senior management. I was the 'one friend' to someone in a similar situation and most of the time they were their own worst enemy whatever the justifications were in their dislike as they made themselves painful to work with.
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Proportional states' votes in the EC would be more likely, but still not that likely. You'd have to have some sort of simultaneous adoption else you'd have, say, California going proportional while Texas keeps giving its votes to the R candidate wholesale which gives the R candidate a big advantage. I know a couple of states do it anyway, but they're small states. Complaining about the EC is a bit like complaining that someone with more wins finishes behind someone else in a football league or the Golden State Warriors not being NBA champions despite having the most wins. It is what it is, everyone knows the rules beforehand and while it may not be a perfectly fair system, it is balanced.
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We've got 4 more years (four more years!) of posterial discomfit to come, I'm very much afraid. They've only just got started on how Hillary won the popular vote* and it isn't even decided by how much she won yet. *so she was the right choice and should have won, nothing needs to change just wait for Trump to self destruct and it'll be Kaine/ Brazile all the way in 2020!
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And another sale, this time for Black Friday and barely a week after the last one ended. Limbo for free if you have Connect. (Probable Bioshock(s) incoming as well, judging by the sale's leader style, colour and font; though they aren't there at this point) Cossacks 3 released as well, which is a recent release. Oddly enough it has a minimum spec requiring 6GB of RAM and a recommended requiring, uh, 4GB at the moment.
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I didn't think you thought it was a verbatim quote, but I thought I'd better be safe due to the 'actual tweet saying that' line. I probably should have linked the tweet in the first place anyway.
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It's there. I paraphrased- actual quote is "No, I worked on it but may not be in the credits (they tried to delete me from the credits at least once since my departure)"- but that should have been pretty obvious from the string of exclamation marks. (To be fair to Infinitron, the first reply to the tweet makes it irrelevant except as evidence of potential butthurt so it's pointless except in that context. And while I might make no twitter integration into a point of pride if we've got youtube integration twitter integration would probably be a good idea so we can keep up on the goss' ourselves)
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It's still there. At least I presume that's the one. I'm surprised Infintron managed to resist adding Chris's "I worked on Tyranny but I bet they've not credited me!!!1!!!" tweet (he's credited on narrative design, first name even), guess it's because we don't have an easy tweet poster unlike the 'codex which would fall apart without the ability to gossip over 147 character messages about trivialities from trivialities. We only discuss the big and important issues, here, and if you want to talk about tweets you jolly well have to click a link to see them like a proper researcher! At this point I'm willing to chip in a few bucks to buy Chris some Preparation H brand botty ointment to treat the obvious butthurt. Then again, perhaps he's researching that High School game he was talking about and wants to get a good idea of what the 'gossip' mechanics need to be.
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I am not sure that is true. Lets take for example Finland's diplomatic envoy, every time we sent one to negotiate with new US president. [..] Totalling to somewhere from 350k to 3 million dollars (three million is more typical than 350k for such trip) for Finnish tax payers. Which is of course usually justifiable because they usually make several billions worth of deals during such trip. In order to get to $25 million you'd have to be having those negotiations on that (top end) scale every year for a double term Trump presidency, it seems unlikely that you'd even have the 3 you'd need to get close to $10 million over 8 years unless you're doing something wrong. It's not really a fair comparison anyway, since; A hotel room is a proper service where the hotel has fixed costs, major staffing, etc and those Finns staying at 'Trump DC' take up bed/ room space that is fundamentally limited. None of those apply to the CF- well, the 'costs' one does obviously, but a single donation by itself has negligible cost associated with it, there's no/ very limited added cost with scale and there is no physical limit to how many donations can be accepted. Critically, in that scenario Trump also only gets extra money from people staying in rooms that would otherwise be empty*, else it's just getting money from a different source and might be counter productive to his business long term if private clients cannot stay and become loyal to alternatives instead; and if Finns are staying there for 2 weeks and taking up half the rooms or whatever then the delegation from Sweden might be able to be there as well, but nobody else can. It's not a good look, potentially, but it is also an inevitable consequence of him running a huge business with the best hotels, let me tell you I know hotels and Trump hotels are just the best, just the best. Tremendous. No wonder diplomats want to stay at them when they're that good. It's certainly not equivalent to the Crooked Foundation and its illegal money laundering, such comparisons are just sad! As previous, I'd be far more concerned with concessions and the like being granted to the Trump businesses as favour currying, as those are where there's a lot of quick money to be made with little scrutiny. *yeah, he could jack up prices for diplomats as well
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By its nature that's far more difficult to prove as an accusation than diplomats staying at a Trump hotel though, especially since she lost. If Saudi donated $25 million in the hope of arms deals they got said arms deals- but you can't prove that the donation influenced that and both parties want and benefit from the deal anyway- and if they donated in the hope of preference when she became President you also can't prove that, since she lost. If that money got diverted in part to her campaign that too is hard to prove. On the other hand, a diplomat saying they'll stay at Trump Washingon (or whatever) to curry favour is both volunteered information and easy to check. Having gulf states are various other kleptocracies like a near bankrupt Ukraine donate in the order of $10 million or more a piece is inherently far more suspicious than Bill and Melinda Gates donating similar amounts because unlike Bill&Mel they are not big on altruistic donations- they're big on corruption, influence peddling and spreading their ideology via 'charity' mosque building that just happen to all be wahhabi/ salafi. Plus you'd have to have a lot of diplomatic missions to get to $10 million worth of accommodation. I'd be more worried about sudden concessions and agreements for hotels, golf courses and the like being granted rather than accommodation as that's pretty small fry. None of that proves anything corruption wise, of course. But at best I'd have to say that the CF almost certainly dangled the thought of potential influence in the faces of those corrupt enough to try and buy it. (Should be noted that GWB's charity almost certainly- no disclosure so can't be sure- accepted Gulf money as well, though the circumstances there are somewhat different since Laura was not even entertaining the idea of going for President, albeit Jeb! was)
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3 years in the 50s. Learn something new every day. In any case while it may not have been clear my view is that having a non ideologue in the post is more important than any other factor. I don't think we've had an ex armed forces Minister of Defence as long as I can remember, albeit our military is way smaller even on a per capita basis. Then again, we also had a just retired when appointed general as theoretically the most important man in the country until recently. Two new things. [am I going to have to edit every post due to dropped keystrkes? Sure looks like it]
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Trump would still be the military's leader, and he is a civilian. In theory the idea of having a civilian as Minister of Defence/ Secretary of Defense is great, in practice though it's more questionable. Depends on the people involved of course, but I'd find it difficult to believe that if, for example, Rumsfeld and Powell's cabinet positions were reversed there would have been half as much trouble in Iraq post invasion. I couldn't see Powell disbanding the Iraqi military and putting 100,000s of resentful, unemployed, unpaid but trained fighters on the streets or most of the other Rumsfeld/ Brenner stuff ups. Same with Brenner as well, his predecessor Garner was military and made practical rather than doctrinaire decisions during his brief time in charge, Brenner otoh was pure Rummy stooge doctrine and was a disaster. The danger is of course that a military secdef is biased either towards the military as a whole or towards their specific branch. But that's also a danger for a civilian secdef as well- in either case it's about picking the right guy/ gal whatever their background.
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Most of those quotes seem reasonable, in a military context. I don't really expect a deeply introspective examination of man's inhumanity to man and exhortations to take up mung bean farming in an anarchist commune from the military; I expect gung-ho bombast and self embiggening mixed with some trash talking. I'm completely unfamiliar with Mattis otherwise though, and with most of Trump's appointments. Doesn't seem to be much point finding anything out about potential appointments since the 'likely' picks of the media don't seem to have been very accurate so far. Individual pagination of the quotes on the other hand, I'd like to unleash the "world's most respected and feared fighting force" on that click harvesting technique. Metaphorically of course, no need to bloody your kukris lads.
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I haven't heard about this before. Is this just part of the updated FB "algorithm" or has it been reported anywhere? It was reported all over the place a couple of days ago. TL; DR: A bunch of 'fake' news sites were/ are going to be removed from FB and Google's affiliate advertising programs; what 'fake news' actually means is to be decided by FB/ Google. And there are currently a plethora of articles about how 'fake' news performed better than 'real' news on FB too. Not like fake news isn't a problem, but there's not a little irony in targeting it immediately after an election where the traditional media failed spectacularly and where we can be fairly certain the management at FB/ Google disagreed with the result.
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Heh, if there's one thing that illustrates how fundamentally borked the system is it's the double and again inconsistent whammy of 'free' trade deals and agricultural subsidies. Because, of course, agriculture is excluded from just about every 'F'TA to protect farmers whether they be 19th century style german or french farmers sucking on the CAP or US corps frolicking in the pork barrel. Meanwhile, IMF demands poor African farmers open their markets to those subsidised goods and grow coffee or bananas instead of proper food so they can buy those subsidised staples. Then the banks decide to do some speculation on the futures market and drive staple prices through the roof. It's a perfect vicious- or virtuous if you're a soulless economic drone- circle where you pump money out of the poor and into your own pockets, plus you get cheap coffee and bananas and a perpetually beholden country out of the deal. Banks do the exact same thing within their own countries. The whole point of 'sub prime' loans was to give people loans they could never pay back to get a few years interest out of them before bankrupting or mortgagee selling the property. Works beaut, until the housing market tanks and the bank can't cover legal costs and the mortgage primary out of the bloated house price increase any more- but at least you're too big to fail so the little guy ends up paying anyway in the bail out. Banks do do essential stuff as well, but the bad stuff is outright parasitical and done solely to benefit themselves to the absolute detriment of those getting their services. And it still goes on. Most reputable companies understand that signing their customers up to bogus services without their knowledge is the preserve of scam artists, but that's what Wells Fargo was doing for over four years.
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And that is only going to get worse so long as current policies continue. There are two mutually incompatible forces at work. Most western countries aren't having enough children for a population where the old are expected to live into their late 70s or 80s. But, ironically, there also aren't enough jobs for those children anyway; and the people who pay for those jobs don't want to pay what a closed market would demand, they want someone used to an Indian/ Indonesian/ Mexican/ African or wherever else wage to be in them. So you have the peculiar circumstance of simultaneously having too many and too few jobs for too many and too few people. You also have the competing desires of the older part of the populace- who want the superannuation, healthcare etc that they paid for over 40 years- versus the younger population who have to pay for it all once the older people retire, because governments accumulated debt rather than prepared for all those old people, shifting the burden onto the current generation. Since old people vote they tend to get what they want, which leaves much of the younger set and anyone who expected to have a manufacturing job for life deeply disillusioned and looking for someone to blame. When political and economic orthodoxy is failing people go for the unorthodox, and that means either left or right. The most ironic thing is probably old people blaming millenials for everything having voted themselves low taxes, debt spending, easy credit and everything else that benefits them and their position. Having their cake, eating their cake then complaining that their children need to harden up because they're taking the children's cake and eating that too. (as always with generalisations, it's deeply unfair to certain individuals within the generalised group. otoh, if you keep voting from pure self interest don't complain when others do the same)
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You want to change your GPU? That's one activation lost. Wanna change something else? There's another activation.Denuvo activations aren't lost. They are still activations. Something which does not belong to gaming. They also definitively make denuvo not just an 'anti-tamper' measure as claimed, unless they mean that it stops you 'tampering' with your computer hardware. Verifying and tying software to hardware is a definite DRM measure as you cannot use protected software until it's been reverified. (Which kind of illustrates why those Eurogamer articles are trash, since they didn't even bother to challenge denuvo on that. Having said that, DRM discussion #32543 in a series of 100000 is a bit pointless, as everyone's positions are pretty set)
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I do wonder whether he/ Time believed what was written in that article or if they felt compelled to do it as the alternative was to admit they had things completely wrong. Neither is a great prospect for motivation, of course, but Time was one of the most stridently anti Trump media (things like the 'Meltdown' and 'Complete Meltdown' covers) so they have to come up with some reason for why they were wrong apart from them being rubbish- because if they're rubbish then why would you buy their mag? Have to say though, I actually haven't seen many articles in that vein. Lots of general wailings and 'where did we go wrongs' from the media, lots of post facto Hillary blaming, very little Bernie Blaming. Guess the loss was sufficiently bad and unexpected that it has caused a genuine jolt, while the Gore 2000 loss at least could be mitigated by/ chalked up to hanging chads or 'cheating' from Katherine Harris. I'd tend to rate the overall Democrat response as being pretty decently self aware- so far. It's a big organisation with lots of vested interests, it can't pivot on a dime. The Wasserman-Schultz's and Brazile's are unlike to fall on their swords politically or metaphorically but there does seem to be some acknowledgement that things went Very Wrong and a desire to fix them. Probably the only way to make things worse is to blame Bernie for everything, though, and that has to be a temptation for Hillary supporters.
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I know why they did it that way but I kind of wish they'd done the 'flashbacks' and the 2033 stuff as separate episodes/ series rather than interwoven threads. Then again if they'd done it that way I'd probably be saying I'd prefer them interwoven. Dunno, didn't like it as much as I should have but will definitely watch the next episode.
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Hey, I love Farscape as much as the next guy but I do feel compelled, compelled I say, to point out that Farscape is indisputably set in the Milky Way rather than another galaxy.
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Dark Alliance was a fun game. It was certainly 'dumb' when compared to the proper Baldur's Gates, but it was fun and in the end that's what was important. Well, that and it selling well. I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone with genuinely kind words about FOBOS though, and remember the marketing as being cringe inducing.
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I know what you mean, but you're taking 'logic' rather too far. Exploration has always been goal based rather than outright logical. Sometimes they're the same thing, sometimes they aren't- if the Americas didn't exist Columbus would be a footnote in history about some idiot who illogically tried sailing across a massive ocean when he could have done the logical thing and explored Africa instead or gone to India by land. By its nature exploration involves many leaps of faith. We also need to consider the competitive aspects of exploration. Individuals and countries were eager to stick their flags in the ground and enrich themselves by getting to new land, and maps were jealously guarded. Nothing quite like going somewhere close, sticking your flag in the ground then coming back to find that there's a bunch of moustachioed conquistadors from El Rey Pedro there and who had claimed the land for Spain years previous. The rough equivalent would be going to Andromeda later and finding that in the meantime a bunch of Turians/ Geth/ Asari/ etc had got their first and were busy nicking all the intergalactic Aztec/ Inca gold equivalent. Perhaps the best historical comparison is to the Portugese. Probably had ~1 million population in the early Age of Exploration, found south america (before Columbus found the north, almost certainly) with more than enough land and exploration opportunities/ exploitable opportunities for a small country. Yet a mere 30 years later they had outposts all around Africa, Goa in India and were routinely toodling around Indonesia as far as Papua New Guinea. From a purely logical perspective that makes little sense for a small country with limited resources even with the lure of spices and the like; and much as with Columbus if circumstances had been different we'd have been laughing at those silly Portugese illogically thinking they could sail around Africa when obviously it was joined to Antarctica.
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That picture seems to be more against Trump than in support of him. As one of the reasons why people say they supported Trump was that he is against political correctness and this picture implies that first three members in his administration have been selected because of political correctness and not because of said people's abilities. I'm pretty sure they'd say that it's a successful PR person, a self made billionaire and a prestigious surgeon who happened to be a woman, gay, and black respectively and were picked for their accomplishments alone. OTOH I'm also pretty sure they weren't actually the first three members of his team anyway. And, of course, if Hillary won and had picked a woman, a homosexual and a poc the same people making the pic would be shouting political correctness, whatever their qualifications. Nature of the game.
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"He supported Hogan who called his daughter's boyfriend the n word. Plus he supports Trump who is racist, sexist and homophobic which means he can't be gay and must hate women as well as hating pocs. He also hates free speech because he and Hogan [plus the jury that awarded Hogan more than he asked for] put Gawker out of business and media should be protected [when targeting those I dislike]. He's alt right [gak] and just a horrible rich white guy whose policies would target the poor who include a lot of pocs" Slight paraphrasing, of course, but I've seen all those 'arguments' made. My response would normally be an eye roll and quote of Cicero's devastatingly casual response 'narratus tepidarius frater' which so infuriated Mark Anthony, if it weren't so emblematic of everything that went wrong on the 'progressive' side. Hypocritical, unappealing to anyone who isn't already convinced yet appears to be effective because the only opinions valued by those saying it are people who already agree with them. As someone who actually is pretty left it's about the most stupid tactic I can imagine, it's already failed and continuing use of it just suggests that lessons will not be learned.
