Zoraptor

There are several different possibilities (and others, such as plain metal fatigue or a door failure causing explosive decompression). Of the two linked the China 611 is perhaps the most likely since the Airbus321 involved here had also had a significant tail strike incident. This analysis brought to you by multiple hours watching Air Crash Investigation/ Mayday. Analysis of the black boxes is required to actually tell. And yeah, they would say that since it exonerates them of blame.

Yeah, a good send off for all the retiring players, the Aussies tried hard but it was quite one sided except for the brief period when Ben Smith got himself sinbinned. We'll probably get Sir Richard McCaw on 1/1/16, if he accepts it. An excellent tournament overall too, the Japan vs RSA game and performance of some of the less fancied teams (Georgia, Scotland as well as Japan) brought a good deal of interest and most games were entertaining.

But there isn't a single PoC there, and a distinct lack of rainbow hair. That doesn't look inclusive at all. And I bet the poor old supermutants are actively discriminated against, as are ghouls radiologically advantaged persons. Bethesda, Bethesda never changes. But seriously, are the F4 graphics the best graphics they're capable of? No wonder they're desperate for paid mods to work.

Not convinced. Shooting down is definitely out of question unless they got specialized surface to air missile systems, which would mean that Sauds or USA delivered them to rebels. I doubt that any of that happened. The Saudis or US would not be arming rebels in Egypt. There were rumours that the ISIS chapter in Egypt may have got hold of a high altitude capable SAM via capture off the Egyptian army, but I don't think anyone seriously believes it given that the whole rebel force in Syria has captured one functional non manpad SAM system despite being far more organised and having captured far more equipment and territory. On the other hand, an airliner that had to reduce altitude due to cabin pressure loss or similar would be in the danger zone for man portable air SAMs which it is very credible that they would have a limited number of. Overall though it is highly unlikely to be a SAM even given that, and I think 'Sinai State' have actually denied it as well.

Erdogan's main aim at the moment is to get the pro Kurd party below the 10% (!) threshold for getting into parliament as that is the only way his AKP can get a majority. That 10% being designed specifically so that Armenians/ Kurds/ Greeks would never get representation especially after the expulsions/ genocides in the 20th century. That strategy isn't working, fortunately, and most polls put them into the low teens support wise. The refugees are excellent leverage against Europe but leverage against Europe requires Erdogan to be in the Executive Presidency of his dreams, so everything is secondary to getting a majority for the AKP. If that doesn't happen the knives will be out, and that is what he's really worried about. Having said that, a million plus refugees in your country is most definitely a legitimate concern, and if Europe wants them to stay in Turkey they certainly have a part to play in that as well as Turkey.

Which episode of Buffy/ Angel is that from? I did rather like Legend of the Seeker TV, and not just because seeing local actors hamming it up at the Hunua Falls or Piha is always amusing.

There actually is a monetary reason to kickstart as well. While there are cheap pledge options, but a lot of people dish out far larger pledges than they'd ever normally spend on a game (I know I did). The average pledge for PoE was about $54, that's a better deal than they're getting from current sales. KS also has a lower cut than 'traditional' pre order systems. Pre order through GOG or Steam and they'll take 30% of the $40 price themselves so Obsidian or whoever is only getting 28$ of that money (minus Paradox's publisher cut too for non backer site PoE pre orders) while KS takes a far smaller proportion. That is somewhat balanced by needing more admin for KS and especially any physical rewards but still, it is ~45$ nett per kickstarter pledge which you can also earn interest/ use of money on vs $28 at most per normal pre order. In many ways once you've got the stuff set up for handling a kickstarter you'd be foolish not to run them as basically a pre order system. That is, more or less, how InXile or Harebrained Schemes have been using KS.

lolwut Volo. You're not checking the lists proper like if you cannot find PoE at all. It's ahead of WL2 (significantly) and DivOS (marginally) despite only having had 1 or 2 sales. Put in some effort son. We do know how many DivOS has sold total (1M+), and can extrapolate from SteamSpy how many of those copies were on steam (~850k). As such DivOS 'must' have sold 150k+ on GOG. And since the vanilla PoE SKU alone let alone kickstarter/ royal etc is ahead of DivOS on GOG there 'must' have been 150k++ sales of PoE on GOG.

We do have a pretty good idea of how it would likely be set up from previous similar situations. But yeah, there's a lot of 'likely's and 'typically's necessary and nothing is definitive. To illustrate, Steam actually is a distributor, and they definitely collect their cut before passing the money along. It's most likely the same will happen with Paradox, it's also what happened with boxed copies of Valve games that were distributed by EA, the retail money went to EA then was passed along to Valve. The relationship is not typical publisher/ developer in the FONV mould but that is not the only alternative. Ironically and also to illustrate, Paradox became a publisher because they were originally relying on a distributor themselves, and they believed they were getting diddled out of money by them since the distributor was getting both sales figures and money and they weren't. That's why they/ their owners originally created Gamersgate too.

I'd compare it to taking pre orders, and pre orders without having to pay 30% upfront to steam/ gog + x% to Paradox if they are used as publisher again. In many ways you're dumb if you don't take the 10% KS (or equivalent) cut over the normal pre order one. The only way it's a problem is if you get KS fatigue equivalent for a second project you want to fund at a similar time as may have happened with Bard's Tale for InXile. Though that may also just be a less attractive game than WL or Torment. They could do early pre orders through the backer portal without a KS, but they wouldn't get the advantage of extended coverage that way.

It's definitely not the FONV model, that requires the publisher to own the IP and pay someone to make the game under contract; Obsidian owns the IP and Paradox was involved late when development was well underway and largely funded. But as the publisher the money should first go to Paradox, they would then take their cut and send the balance to Obsidian under whatever terms their agreement specifies. Obsidian would get per sale money, but it would have to go through Paradox to get to them.

The Paradox statement does imply it's Steam only, but doesn't state it outright: "..over half a million players have purchased the game worldwide, making it one of the best-selling games on Steam this year." Though it certainly also says it includes kickstarter backers. Though given it is Paradox I wouldn't put it past them to have forgotten that alternatives to steam exist. The money from PoE almost certainly goes to Paradox first, as they are the publisher. That would exclude KS and backer site sales but would include everything GOG/ Steam/ Origin and non backer site pre orders.

Yep, source with full statement. Though I'd put pretty much any amount of money that PoE has sold closer to 700k to this point than 500k. Paradox may well have only paid out on 500k copies to this point though or as their full release implies it has had 500k steam sales only. Steamspy's methodology is pretty robust and the figures for DivOS don't leave much room for PoE selling less than 150k on GOG.

Proper STV is a great system, us going for mixed member proportional instead when we switched from first past the post was a horrible decision.

I'd suspect there are tax breaks involved, but then I'm pretty cynical.

It's the first time ever it's been all southern hemisphere. Probably shouldn't have been given the admission that the final penalty in the Aus v Scotland game was incorrectly awarded but results are results. Shame really, an Argentina/ Scotland semi would have been a pretty cool result.

"Boring to who [sic]. Our personal opinions are irrelevant."-- Volourn; Avellone working on DivOS2 thread 3 Oct 2015, Obsidian forums Computer & Console subforum. This quote is going to get some usage, I think.

At least Christiansen was less annoying than Jake Lloyd as Anakin. Really though, Sir Laurence Olivier couldn't have spun silk out of the pig's ear prequel dialogue, that and the 'faster, more intense' direction is on Lucas. McGregor and McDiarmid managed to do well despite the material, albeit in McDiarmid's case by playing the panto villain and alternately mugging the audience/ chewing the scenery but Portman, who is a pretty good actor in other things had similar problems to Christiansen in the prequels. As for the trailer, well, it's Star Wars and I have to admit it makes older me feel like I'm ten again so mission accomplished there.

Heh, we've only lost one final, in 1995- in the other ones we didn't even make the final to choke there. Ironically the French are probably the biggest final chokers since they've lost three and won none. Doesn't look like we'll choke this time but then again it didn't look like we would in 1999 either. Bit of a shame for Wales in the first match, especially given their injuries and that they were leading with only five minutes to go.

You'd be best waiting for a discount probably, and unless you're desperate for a game to play. If you didn't like the demo that is usually a good indication. The story does get 'better' the more you play, but the graphics won't and in order for the story to get better you have to want to play; if you don't it won't.

Australia should beat Scotland handily, though Aus weren't exactly stellar against the patched together Welsh and the Scots are one of the few teams actually playing near their potential. RSA should beat Wales as well, would be near 50/50 or slightly to Wales if Wales weren't so badly effected by injury, but they are and in crucial positions. Wouldn't be surprised if Argentina upset Ireland though Ireland would be favourites, Argentina are limited in attack but they also have few weaknesses. ABs should beat France though neither team in that match up has been playing well lately. It's a worse French team than in either 1999 or 2007, but they've got a pretty good chance if the ABs keep playing like they've stuck in 2nd gear for 60 minutes a game, keep dropping the ball and giving away idiotic penalties and yellow cards from players who should know better like Read and McCaw.

Civilisation and Europa Universalis were both originally board games, and fairly well known. It's McIntosh anyway, he'll be hyperbolising same as always.

Various Zidane headbutt gifs were classic- the Mortal Kombat one and the death star destruction ones I remember in particular. I suspect there isn't a person who has played Italy who hasn't wanted to flatten one of the Italians in similar style (and what style) at some point during the match.

Slight over exaggeration, and slight overestimation of how much thought most people actually put into the internet. You get that sort of thing for sports stars getting injured, people actually dying and all sorts in between; doesn't mean they're Iosef Dugashvili reborn it just means that they're a muppet. The internet warrior of 2015 would soil themselves repeatedly and hide under the bed for days if they got the slightest inkling of actual Civil War Russia.

Nah, 99% of the time I just ignore you, so the last thing I'm going to do is trawl through pages of you following Sensuki around from thread to thread or whatever. Much as 99% of the time if there's a game I don't like I ignore it rather than wandering in to (not so) randomly diss it. Just thought people who weren't aware of your background and chip on shoulder with respect to the Codex/ VD etc needed to know where you were coming from.