Zoraptor

He didn't. I've actually looked at stuff released by Greenwalt et al and it has redactions up the wazoo; you may be thinking of Assange/ Wikileaks who started out with redactions then basically went 'oh asterisk it' and dumped all the low value stuff sans redactions. He does have a, er, 'continued good health promotion' file which gets released should he 'accidentally' get hit by a JDAM aimed at Al-Jazeera the Chinese Embassy a known terrorist; but that obviously hasn't happened, yet at least. The answer as to why detail was released is obvious, it makes it impossible to refute when you have the documentation and can read it yourself; you cannot just claim it's paranoid delusion/ made up or misunderstood. That's why apologists have moved from labelling anyone who dislikes governmental monitoring as tinfoil hat conspiracists- can hardly use that label when it's obvious they were right- to saying that they trust the government and thus everyone should, or the even more cretinous "I don't care, therefore nobody else should", or totalitarianisms favourite "if you have nothing to hide..." Thing is, he didn't have the files on him when he went to either HK or Moscow, they don't even have physical access to the files- and GCHQ couldn't crack them even with physical access.

That report is bollocks. Breaking the encryption on Snowden's files requires breaking aes256- if that's broken then there are Major Problems since it is used very extensively by a wide range of internet applications and services for encryption- and, crucially, by the NSA itself. And a brute force penetration is statistically impossible. That Bruce takes something said by an 'anonymous source' to Rupert Murdoch as gospel is unsurprising, as is the usual acritical repetition by the media; but the story, as a whole, isn't credible in the slightest. I can perfectly well believe that they're moving agents, but it's far more likely that one of the latest security breaches included something monumentally stupid like a list of active agents in plain text, or a list of crypto keys in plain text, or both. Oddly enough, one of Snowden's bigger but more ignored (well, by the NSA parrot choir) points was how much information is collected and how widely available and insecure it is. Which is pretty obvious, given the two breaches we know about came from someone not even employed by the NSA at the time but by a contractor, and a soldier with the lowest (?) regular rank possible. Frankly, China or Russia could just do it the old fashioned way and pay an equivalent person to get information surreptitiously if they need it, it would be up to date, easier and the person could do it multiple times. Reminds me how it was leaked that David Miranda was carrying a password around on him when he got detained at Heathrow and all the tutting about how that was terrible and a security risk. Of course, GCHQ then went to court to try and hold his stuff longer, because they couldn't crack the encryption on his hard drive even with him supposedly carrying a password... Slander and misinformation, and still you get hapless drones without an independent thought in their minds saying how we should all trust the gummint, trust the NSA/ GCSB/ GCHQ etc and they have our best interests at heart. Yeah, they only lie to protect us, they only listen to everything they can for the same reason. Meh, all terrorists can do is kill you, those 'patriots' and their shills would make you a slave and not even let you know until they need to force your hand for something.

Clearly the answer is that if the robots didn't have sexes where would the baby robots come from? Actually I'm more amused not by having extraneous sexuality in asexual machines but her appearing to have either extra boob/ crotchplate or be wearing only a sort of armoured bikini. That's really going the distance on extraneous sexuality, can't have her non existent/ non functional/ why on earth cybertron would you have them in a designed 'species' sexual organs being exposed to the world, might corrupt those impressionable ten year olds. In before Bruce: will she be in the game, and romanceable?

And one of the Queen's guards gave a little girl a smack in the chops when saluting too enthusiastically too. Having someone be mildly rude to you at EuroDisney for being un bifsteak or le yank pales in comparison to crashing a rollercoaster or being beaten up by a Beefeater/ Yeoman Guard/ Horse Guard/ Household Guard.

Well that sounds scummy as ****. Anyone else doing something similar? I don't know actually, I'm not really following steam pricings much myself. I don't think it is a genuinely widespread phenomenon though, some early access games seem to be labelling discounts against the release price (rather than the EA price) of the game is about all I've heard of it otherwise. Still, I'm pretty sure most people would not like that practice to become widespread. (It should be noted that they changed the price back on GTAV standalone and applied the discounts to its 'bundles' instead. Still a deceptive practise though, since instead of saving 25% on GTAV you'd actually be getting a free GTASA copy- or some game cash that renders its bundle unrefundable. At best the 'free' game is an ~6% discount on GTAV, taking the <$4 sale cost of the bundled game off the $60 base price)

In some ways it's a shame that the reddit censorship thing has blown up now, I'd like to see more about Rockstar upping the base price of GTAV 25% then having a 25% off sale that saves cents. That's actually illegal, here, (albeit what could be termed little i illegal rather than big I Illegal) and it really ought to be everywhere since it's an intrinsically deceptive practice.

Clearly this is spoilers for the ongoing Musketeers series where to the point I've seen it Rochefort is stubbornly biocular. Really though, the forum software should start every fact about Christopher Lee with :cool: not just one.

Cold, dense and lifeless might work better. My inner pedant wants people to know that gold is actually rather soft for a metal, especially pure gold. And yes, that line does rather look like a straight line for a Discworld Observation along the lines of "Ankh Morpork; one man, one vote! Yes, the one man certainly does have the vote". Then again, this is a mainstream (well, ish) game using the most mainstream of D&D settings and mainstream mechanics, expecting the associated prose to be the height of originality and excellence is a bit unrealistic.

Meh, yet more talk about Wang. I want the alternative protagonist Vietnamese DLC so I can talk about Dong instead.

Not sure that like is quite the right word. The particular provisions and positions wrt Pharmac and our drug sourcing is already quite well known as everytime Pharmac go for a cheap Indian/ Brazilian/ Cuban generic someone in the US, Britain or Switzerland throws a wobbley about us not paying massively over the odds for the 'genuine' but out of patent article. You'd think big pharma would be happy with us being the only other country aside from the US where they can direct market drugs. I'd already read an equivalent article, sadly it isn't really seen as a particularly big deal in general here- though a fair number are upset most here have the critical faculties of overboiled cabbage.

"first they came for the miscacomorphs*, but I stayed silent because I didn't hate fat people"? Pretty clear thin edge of wedge though, as the policy will absolutely inevitably be applied selectively. *cacomorphobia is the fear of fat people, iirc, no idea if there's a 'real' term for hatred of fat people.

Bard's Tale is a bit of an odd sell. Wasteland and Torment could piggyback on Fallout and PST which appeal strongly to the kickstarter demographic, the later Bard's Tale games were somewhat underwhelming. Essentially, you hear lots of people who want a new Fallout or PST game, not so many who want a new BT. Plus, kickstarter fatigue looks to have finally, uh, kicked in for a 'high profile' title. In any case, looks like backers will get the original trilogy, thanks to those fine upstanding fellows at EA coming to the party. So that's four free games for early backers.

There was a question over TOR since it was ongoing with new content being added, but it was officially confirmed as legends on Starwars.com itself. It's non canon. In any case Bioware is supposedly (ie nothing officially announced) working on a new SW RPG themselves, so there's very, very little chance of Obsidian doing one.

Having posts in OT forums count towards post totals tends to encourage spamming in those forums. Post counting should remain on the gold standard, lest they become subject to inflation and devaluation.

My impression at the time was that neither side had a really strong desire for an agreement so were relatively happy to find things to disagree on and be able to blame the other for intransigence- the above situation would actually reinforce that impression for me- with the US/ Obama being a bit more keen than Maliki to have at leave some presence left. Certainly a parliamentary vote doesn't seem like a big matter, unless Maliki thought there was no chance he could win it in which case he'd have a strong motivation to be spiking the agreement. It's certainly speculation and impression on my part though. Dunno, I guess if the current US trainers etc are currently operating under an 'executive order' SOFA or a fully voted SOFA might be relevant, though obviously the situation is different now and Maliki has gone.

There have been two such Dragon Age games, iirc. Dragon Age Legends and Dragon Age Journeys. Not sure if they were strictly mobile games though rather than Facebook or similar. InXile seems the most likely destination, so the most plausible explanation is he wants to work on VB or whatever for longer than he can really take a leave of absence or similar from Obsidian. If it is InXile we'll likely find out soon since they have a kickstarter active, if it's somewhere or something else it will likely take longer. It's all speculation anyway, if you want conspiracy theories I'd recommend the Codex, they've been busy trolling each other with fake tweets.

Barack Obama is a 2016 candidate? Showing his contempt for the constitution yet again, even if it is only for a pesky amendment. I'm unconvinced that Maliki ever had an intention to actually allow a SOFA anyway, whatever he said and whatever Obama or anyone else may have hoped for/ wanted. I doubt they would have got anything that would have materially altered the current situation even had they had more extensive negotiations, and it would have lowered Obama's popularity as a broken promise. Fundamentally though, the damage in Iraq was done in 2003-4. Mistakes were certainly made later as well but they were made in a general context of juggling a bunch of live hand grenades.

CDPR? Nah. Bethesda? Nah, F4 is far too far along anyway. InXile? Nah, the 8th President of the US wouldn't make a good RPG subject. All the evidence does indicate that he's heading to Bioware- Dave Gaidar even stepped down as creative lead on Dragon Age to make room, plus there's their Star Wars RPG (rumours are it's KOTNewR) coming up as well. They might even be doing a swap, with Gaidar coming to Obsidian. Nah, he's going to work with Ken Levine on System Shock 3, as I just won the Eurobillions lottery. Good luck to him anyway and whatever he ends up doing, one of the very few people whose work I'd buy sight unseen just on the name.

They're having one of their all-deals(?)-in-sale days today so there's a large number of new and repeat deals on, plus The Wolf Among Us and Walking Dead seasons and Battle Realms free. The two Telltale seasons are going to be hard to resist, I nearly bought the DVD TWD season 1 for twice what both of them cost now, so I'd really be saving money, wouldn't I...

More SJW infighting! McIntosh is having a jab at Brianna 'Batman' Wu!

When he was played by Sir Ian I always presumed Gandalf Magneto was gay and had had a fling with Captain Picard when younger. Bit of a shock finding out he'd actually been boffing Katniss during that earlier timeframe a few movies later. Then again, I never read the comics. Not invited isn't really banned though.

Potential book 6 spoiler, though I guess most of the stuff on the show now is potential book 6 spoiler...

Soaring rhetoric can get you a long way towards popularity though, even if it achieves nothing. Despite agreeing with the vast majority of those points and examples I have to agree with Bruce on the overall picture, if not the detail. In places where the US is generally liked it is liked more now than under Bush, in places where it was disliked under Bush it is generally disliked less under Obama. There are exceptions of course, but I'd say that holds true in general. Partly it's because Obama has made popular decisions, though practically speaking a lot hasn't been 'good' but more along the lines of "well, McCain probably would have been worse, and Bush was worse" in amongst some stuff which has worked OK; his follow up to everything has been almost always terrible, but that is not usually what sits in the mind of people in general. There's also an element of him being inherently different and special through being the first black president, that represents a lot to many people. Plus, much of the world either hated Bush or feared what stupidity he'd visit next on the world and saw McCain/ Romney as Bush 2.1- so Obama did not so much have a mountain to climb to world popularity but a precipitous ravine to climb out of. I certainly don't think Obama has been particularly competent though, just relatively popular.

Except everyone- everyone- knew Assad had WMDs, Syria wasn't a member of the CWC until 2013. For the same reason Israel (and Pakistan/ India for that matter) ain't a member of the NPT. In contrast, it was just anyone with any sense who knew what jollying about in Russia's back yard would get as reaction.

There's as much actual chance of Putin attacking NATO as there was of Saddam hitting London with an anthrax packed Scud in 45 minutes, though he's obviously not willing to put up with NATO asterisking about in his back yard any more and probably wishes that abject moron Yeltsin had drunk himself to death a decade earlier.