Zoraptor

For sure. We've already seen what happens when governments decide to redefine who human rights apply to, and at very very best it ends up in the flagrant hypocrisy of those governments themselves ignoring human rights. And that's best case. Just ignore Breivik. Not just because he's making complaints because he wants attention and there's a shortage of unarmed people and children around for him to bravely murder with a high powered rifle, ignore him because the most fitting punishment is for him to shuffle off this mortal coil decades from now in the full knowledge that he changed nothing and dies unremarked, unloved and forgotten.

I think she'd meet most of the criteria for a new media journalist. Certainly so here, bloggers are journalists since 2014. (Don't visit the blog mentioned in that article under any circumstances, not even to check whether I'm just being dramatic. You have been warned)

Different US regions aren't analogous to different European states. Perhaps if the Articles of Confederation were in use rather than the Constitution that would be a fair comparison, but that isn't the case here. A weaker currency is better if your primary industries, tourism and agriculture in Greece's case, benefit from having a favorable exchange rate because it allows you to export goods at more competitive prices. Adopting the Euro was an utterly idiotic move on Greece's part, given that their primary industries heavily benefit from favorable exchange rates and are much less competitive without that benefit. A weaker currency also increases the costs of imports, which helps the other side of the equation and balances any tendency to buy too many cheap German imports (on credit) by increasing their cost. There certainly are potential problems with a weak currency, especially if you're making it weak by printing more cash which is what Greece-with-Drachma would have to do as debt relief, as it's inflationary and strongly so if combined with money printing plus tends to reduce standard of living by effectively reducing wages; by and large though the problems they have with the Euro itself are far, far worse than that- they currently have strong deflation instead and 35% poverty rate, you can't get much worse than either. If Greece had the drachma they'd have a lot more tools available to deal with things, essentially. They could adjust central bank interest rates to influence cost of internal lending, print money to pay debt and increase competitiveness via weakening their currency, and the drachma's value would be sensibly (more or less) influenced by what Greece is doing and how Greece is performing, not how Germany is. As it stands they cannot adjust their interest rates and cannot print money, the EU aspects of their fiscal policy ensure deflation, uncompetitiveness and high debt with no way to recover; and if they do adopt the drachma again it is not going to be sensibly valued and 'stable'- far more important as a concept than being 'strong' or 'weak'- but will implode in a singularity of emotion and financial panic. It's not that it would be a panacea and fix everything or conversely, stop everything going wrong if they'd kept the drachma, and certainly not if they go back to it. But it would be easier for them to have managed problems, and less bad than the situation under the Euro for everyone involved.

Ideally they would have decided that Greece could not pay back their debt under any reasonable circumstance in 2008- they already have the largest primary (ie before interest payments) surplus at 5% in Europe and by a reasonable margin, plus the harshest austerity; if they aren't going to pay money back in those circumstances you've got to just face reality instead of continuing bullheadedly. Even more ideally in 2002 you either have a proper Euro zone with a proper common fiscal policy like aggregated borrowing and rules that are followed by everyone*, or decide to have no Euro. Since you cannot do either without a time machine and more political will than anyone in Europe has that leaves two options, reduce the debt to a reasonable level via a 'haircut', which is what happened for Germany post WW2, or let Greece leave the Euro on terms as amicable as possible and just take the damage from default. Increasing debt levels on Greece and increasing debt levels of your own when it cannot in any reasonable sense be paid back is simply stupid and benefits no one except those ideologically wedded to the ideal of the Euro for whom a grexit is simple anathema and the death knell of out and out integrationism. In the more general sense, there's no literal obligation on Germany to remember and reciprocate their debt being forgiven, that's a part of it being forgiven after all. Morally though? One of the fundamentals not just of 'good manners' but of diplomacy and all other forms of balanced relationships is reciprocity, the idea that you don't just do stuff to benefit yourself all the time and that when you benefit from another's action, well, one good turn deserves another. If Greece helped Germany out under circumstances where they'd be justified in saying "no" emphatically there is a moral obligation of reciprocity on Germany's part for precisely that reason. *And it should be noted, even the rules that do exist now are regularly ignored by nearly everyone.

Really Bruce, even for you that is particularly... unique* perspective given how many Greeks the Germans outright killed, let alone the damage they did to the country and its economy over WW2. Blame me for mentioning Lidice, I guess, even if I couched it as a economic comparison I clearly should have used Kondomari/ Kalavryta/ Kandanos instead- just on Crete, mind you. Just in case anyone doesn't know the details, Germany declared war on and conquered Greece during WW2 with commensurate deaths in combat, mass murder, starvation, destruction of property, mass appropriation and the like. 12 years after that they forgave Germany their debt. Bruce is right, that's not really similar circumstances- half a million (7% of pop) Greeks died as a result of WW2, I'm pretty sure not a single German has died due to issuing stupid loans that can't be paid back. BTW Bruce, won't get much more west than Greece, cradle of western civilisation and that. Oh,* *

Don't know about especially profligate, their debt: GDP ratio didn't spike until 2008 and didn't significantly increase from that of their Euro accession so their borrowing was keeping pace with growth. It was retrospectively stupid, massively so, but it was a retrospective stupidity nearly everyone had over the equivalent period and which they were at least somewhat encouraged towards by the same people who are complaining now about bailing them out. Fundamentally, few nations paid back debt in the early-mid 2000s as they should have, and wherever they were. And I guess I'd also chirp in again there should be an obligation on lenders to lend with some responsibility as well as for borrowers to borrow responsibly, and significant consequences if they don't. The tax enforcement thing is also a bit overstated, though obviously more is better for their situation. I was rather surprised myself but in 2009 Greece's black/ grey economy was almost exactly 20% (wikipedia says 25%, but their maths is simply wrong, herp derp) of GDP with well regulated and efficient Germany having 15% GDP grey/ black economy. There isn't that much room for improvement, certainly not as much as there is generally implied to be.

I think a few common misconceptions need to be alleviated, there's a lot of utter rubbish in the press. The Greek issue is not primarily self inflicted- though they're certainly not blameless- and the current situation is the economic equivalent of the US bombing Hanoi to the stone age or the SS liquidating Lidice; pour (d)é(n)courager with a pretty large dollop of I'm looking at you, l'autre Podemos. Syriza is an ideological opponent, if they succeed then Spain and who knows else follows and suddenly the economic kool aid of bailing out the rich- banks in this case- via taxpayers nationalising their bad debt then going full neo liberal theory suddenly looks like kool aid swilling. Gut Syriza, blame them and the Greeks forever, just a bit more cutting, a bit more blood, a bit more hard work (from the people who are already the hardest working per the OECD, shame so few have jobs, eh) and suddenly it'll be paradise! What was the big stumbling block; pensions vs raising taxes on the well off, the amount of money to be raised was the same. Far from being gold plated fountains of euros 45% of Greek pensioners are below the EU's own, self defined poverty line already, yet the IMF wants to cut them further. That is taking money straight out of the Greek economy, money which would be spent in shops, on rent, electricity etc and circulate because people on the poverty line aren't saving and aren't sending their cash off to Switzerland, Bermuda or Frankfurt to sit in banks or offshore share markets, nor are they buying London houses for 15% p/a appreciation which is what any sensible Greek who is rich has been doing for the past 7 years. However, the IMF expects those rich people whose taxes they don't want raised to invest in Greece because... well, who really knows, why would anyone who has an option given the mess the troika has made of it? There ain't an answer, you'd be mad to, yet the IMF says that is what will happen and it won't if you raise taxes on the well off. So still the IMF soldiers on, driving the economy further down, it's already shrunk 30%, unemployment is already 25%, poverty 35%, debt has ballooned to 180% of GDP since 'austerity' from just over 100%, 10% of their entire economic output is required just to service interest let alone pay stuff back, and that is full on GDP, not even tax take note. And, of course, it is largely due to the utterly borked structure of the euro. Greece can't do anything to help itself because its currency is run from Frankfurt, not Athens, and for the benefit of Frankfurt, not Athens. It is constantly uncompetitive because Germany is a far bigger economy, Germany is helped because the euro is lower, relatively, than a deutchmark would be; Greece is hamstrung because the Euro is far higher than a drachma would be and they cannot print money to pay or inflate away debt. So Greece cannot compete effectively either within Europe not externally because its currency is too high which overvalues their products, but at the same time it has to maintain its own debt etc. Worst of both worlds. Fix the Euro, which effectively means full fiscal union, or disband it and the pan Europeans can go asterisk themselves, else Greece will not be the last. Won't happen though, stupid is as stupid does, and politicians will be stupid if it's politically expedient to be so. Greece should have defaulted in 2008 and left the euro, their economy would be 30% larger then than now and facing the same prospect. They couldn't repay their debts when they were 100% of GDP and that was why the banks who owned that debt got bailed out*, how anyone thinks they can service it at its new, 180% of GDP is beyond sensible consideration and is a result of the most moronic ideological myopia imaginable. *Which is the really galling thing. Sure, one can rail on the Greeks for living beyond their means, it's true enough, and complain about bailing them out; but someone lent them the money and they were bailed out every bit as much, more so they since they haven't faced anywhere near the costs Greece has. Yet for some reason you don't hear the Troika pushing that narrative- completely true, too- at all for some reason. Congrats, Eurotypes, you bailed out irresponsible lenders to the tune of 350 billion Euro or whatever, every bit as much as you bailed out the irresponsible borrower. Yet while Greece's economy has shrunk 30%, 35% poverty, 25% unemployment, 60% youth unemployment those irresponsible lenders have, what, bought a new Bugatti Veyron to keep their Ferrari, Maserati and Pagani from being lonely in their 17th century renovated Tuscan villa? Slight disparity in treatment there, even if I were over exaggerating slightly.

Jamming would likely be far more used than hacking, after all it's 'simple' to jam a signal. You could also target the signal propagation at source by hitting the control facility or the satellite system as other potential examples. Though hacking would give some interesting possibilities without an 'assume direct control' approach, like revoking or corrupting security keys so no commands would be recognised.

I'd change the last bit slightly to say that she did nothing wrong that was of public interest, cheating in a relationship is morally wrong most would say, but it is a private matter and isn't really anyone else's business except the involved parties except in extraordinary circumstances which certainly didn't apply here. It was gossip rather than news, one might say. Which is also more or less Hulk Hogan's reasoning vs Gawker. Having said that, her reaction certainly didn't help matters and went a long way towards legitimising the public interest and making it news, at least in regards to her reaction itself. Apart from that the problem was that Grayson seemingly didn't/ doesn't think he did anything wrong and that his privacy should be paramount, and that antagonised many. I actually have a bit of sympathy for Grayson there since I can easily believe he didn't think he did anything wrong, wrote objectively anyway (and I'd use the example I've used before, I bet most people here would have no problem writing a review of an Obsidian game and believe they'd be objective) and most of the reason the issue had legs was due to the other party, not him. I don't like Grayson, he was not good at RPS and worse at Kotaku but I'm less than convinced he actively set out to be unethical as opposed to not even considering those implications.

They have said pretty much exactly that sort of thing before though, prior to the Vietnam War when they were making F-4s with no cannon because they'd only need missiles. The end result was the F4 getting a cannon and the F14/15/16/18. Though they could be right, this time.

Presumably they want to talk about Obsidian stuff at the panel too, not field a million and one questions about Chris leaving, the terms of Chris leaving, what Chris is going to do in the future etc instead.

Well, that aviationweek article doesn't seem to say how it actually performed against/ relative to the F16 in a practical comparison, at all. If it had performed well you'd expect them to focus on how much better than the F16 it already was and how they won x out of y simulated engagements or whatever while still having room for improvement, not just on it having room for improvement. ie, this has no mention of actually being better than the F16, just that they think the F35 has room for improvement. It's certainly inference, but it's pretty likely inference that it isn't better than the F16, just as war-is-boring claims. I have to admit I've never really 'got' the F35 though. Seems far too much a jack of all trades, master of none compromise to me.

Grr quote system, why you not work? I'd be pretty sure that most of the anti sjw crowd would find that comparison a bit... lacking. SJWs are a lot more evangelical than that which is why they have the 'warrior' part of their moniker, religion wise they're more like 7th Day Adventists or adherents of the Church of Latter Day Saints- or perhaps more like an atheist(+) who insists on going into a church to try and convert people there. If I were feeling particularly bad about sjws I'd compare them to Crusaders, going to liberate the heathen reddit and 4chan and convert them by fire and the sword to the Right Way of Social Justice, lest they die the permanent eDeath and never become eNlightened in the ways of our Lord Theoretically Non Hierarchical Pseudo Collective. To which I can only say: boo-****ing-hoo, grow the **** up. I do find it vaguely ironic that cries of "grow a thicker skin!" and "make your own game!" abound whenever someone mentions they don't feel represented in today's gaming, but when "webspaces" [which ones?] are "being pushed" [how?] to adopt a set of morals [specifically what set?] they didn't originally have [since when can't culture shifts happen naturally? for that matter, why is it bad when they happen?], it's suddenly "a blow against your personhood", akin to the plight of the Native Americans. ... Wow. Just wow. That was certainly a bit overstated, if someone seriously feels their personhood has been affronted by something online it had better be something significant like defamation or the like rather than having some hipster be a bit of an asterisk. However, as above sjws are evangelical about their views. 4chan was a asteriskhole of a place, yet sjws want to influence it. Why, really, unless they want to (yeah, metaphorically, there might be a bit of metaphor around this post) sack, slaughter and stick the eHeads of their eNemies on virtual pikes above the gates? You have sjws cliques in reddit running fake groups and doxxing and organising harassment campaigns with impunity because they're fighting the good fight or whatever. Overall though, equating 'make your own games' with 'make your own (new) forums' is not really a valid equation. GGers cannot 'invade' a game and put it to fire and the sword, worst they can do is ridicule it and not buy it, if it appeals to a market and is competently made then that hardly matters- if it doesn't then whatever GG may say, which is all they can really do, doesn't matter. OTOH, sjws can easily invade a forum whether old or new so can invade and brutalise any refugee forums established just as easily as the original ones. So the only answer for places like 8chan or the 'codex is to take the immortal words of Admiral Tolwyn to heart: 'The price of freedom is eternal vigilance'.

There are really two related issues, outright censorship where dissenting voices are silenced systematically by those in power and self censorship via pressure. It's the second one which is the one with the differing interpretations, and that relies on two competing factors- essentially, the personality of the person with the opinion and the intentions of the person (allegedly/ supposedly) trying to silence that opinion. The personality of the person is important because some do take any dissension from their opinion as being harassment or such, and an attempt to silence, while others will go to the other extreme and take any dissension as an invitation to jump on a soap box and shout their opinion from the virtual rafters. Or troll shamelessly, for that matter. Most people tend to be somewhere between those two extremes, of course, and are somewhat responsive to social pressures. The intention of the dissenter is also important, as it may vary from honest disagreement to honest but dogmatic/ ideological disagreement to apologetic disagreement/ correction to a deliberate attempt to shut the other person up via ridicule, dogpiling/ calling in reinforcements, following the person around, appealing to authorities to shut the person up for you etc. So there are two 'blameworthy' types for self censorship, those who are too sensitive to any criticism and thus censor themselves to avoid it (and if we take the Moosa situation as self censorship it would, imo, fit this type) but then claim to have been harassed or whatever; and from the other side those who are genuinely trying to shut others up by the e equivalent of school yard tactics such as shouting at them or calling them names. Though obviously there is some fuzziness and bleed through about where self and real censorship begin, someone shouting about thoughtcrime from other posters on Neogaf is usually trawling for them to be banned for their temerity, not just trying to get them to shut themselves up. Bro', that's not the Golden Horde. That's the whole Mongol asterisking Empire. With a bit of massaging, since the GH and the Ilkhanate had already split from them at that point, to all practical purposes. GH/ Mongol Empire successors lasted until the Crimean Tartarate/ Khanate in 1780 (ish), which just goes to show how educational games are since this is all gained from Crusader Kings/ Europa Universalis.

The propaganda accusation is based on my observations predominantly, but I think it's well enough founded. It's an english language publication using articles largely sourced from english bureaux and papers, and with a fairly clear slant on its own articles. It isn't so much that it is extraordinarily biased itself, comparatively to other PR outfits on both sides, as that it has a sense of 'false authority' in being a 'Russian' paper saying 'bad' stuff about Russia which is then given extra and undue weight as a balanced source due to that. That is true, but it is also true for everyone, amphibious assaults and the like are not really defensive in nature. Most drills aren't in truth, from any side with power projection capabilities, you can bet that any actual NATO/ Russia confrontation has had offensive drills done for it as well as defensive ones, on both sides, and both with the suggestion they would just be responding to aggression. Fundamentally though, if China does amphibious drills it is likely for a scenario involving an attack on Taiwan whether they say so or not. If Russia did the same it was usually a scenario involving Crimea or the Baltic States, historically, and whether they actually stated it or not. But at the same time, if the US is doing them in South Korea it is definitely aimed at North Korea, whatever is said, and from direct historical experience last time the US actually did an amphibious landing there it was not in any realistic way 'defensive' in nature, they didn't stop at Seoul, and wouldn't have stopped at all until the Yalu and the Chinese intervention. Sure, the US would say that that is defensive because the North started the war- but then they'd also claim that the Iraq War was defensive too, in the preventative sense, so amphibious drills leading up to that were defensive as well.

From their pov Denmark and Norway are members of NATO, which is and always has been an anti Russian alliance. Sweden proclaims neutrality, but is mainly just used as a stalking horse for making NATO look reasonable because a 'neutral' is saying the same things (per the hilarious sub hunt which, coincidentally, took place during budget allocation and was competent and honestly enough run to to label a speedboat as a sub) and was hardly neutral even during the cold war, let alone now. Finland, well, they have the rather inaptly named 'Moscow Times' based there, which is an overt propaganda outlet. Though it does provide amusement when people think it actually is a Russian paper. Still, Finland is passably neutral unlike the other three, but strategy wise you have to go through Finland to get to Sweden/ most of Norway. Mostly though, it is rather ironic that you get exactly the same argument, exactly in reverse, from the US and ROK when it comes to their amphibious invasion drills in the Korean peninsula. That's all defensive, designed to be preventative, supposed to stop DPRK aggression etc and the DPRK is completely, utterly, fundamentally wrong in regarding it as aggressive preparation for an invasion because so long as the DPRK isn't aggressive and provocative nothing will happen! Always nice to see the Torygraph produce something that [North Korean Pravda] would print, just with the names switched around, very illustrative.

Yeah, I could definitely see Trump thinking that the Tenpenny Tower quest sequence in F3 was some sort of metaphorical take on the dangers of immigration. I do wonder if he'd get the Tenpenny <-> Trump connection or not.

It's not specifically about hobbling in a reversible way though. I look at something like, say, the 970 vs the 980 (non Ti) of the current generation and wonder if it really costs 60% more to produce a 980 as opposed to a 970 given that most of the specs are identical- the prices here are ~550NZD vs >850NZD. And looking at the wikipedia page it does seem that there was some... controversy there about whether the 970 was hobbled or nVidia lied about its specs. I doubt that'll be any time soon as the logistics/administration would likely be nightmarish... It has no added cost to what software vendors like Adobe are already doing if they sell the cards then sell 'service plans' or whatever for the extra cash. For 'leasing' you get equivalent situations with cell phones/ call plans and computers plus various other things already; and in any case you're offloading the costs onto the consumer ultimately, so if there are admin costs you increase or otherwise massage the price to reflect that. Corporations love that stuff. I've got a theoretically 'free' satellite TV box and a theoretically free 4g modem- but I don't of course, as they're useless paperweights unless I pay the monthly fee for content- and there's no inherent reason AMD or Nvid couldn't do that too for their cards. Monsanto do much the same for seed, of all things, Steam is a subscription rather than purchase service, all software is licensed etc. Corporates would apply it to just about everything if they could, at the drop of a hat. Fortunately they can't do it at present because of backlash, but they'd still love to in theory.

Planetscape: Tournament: Enhanced Edition with added dialogue and content from their new employee, Chris Avellone.

They put up with it because the balance from the $7 (or whatever it now is) licensing fee is getting a below cost/ below effective cost console. If you buy a console and then only buy second hand rather than new software for it they don't get that licensing fee and you don't pay it anyway. The console is- essentially- an equivalent to selling an automatic fly spray dispenser below actual cost because once sold the person is likely to buy lots of refill cylinders for it. Though the console can also do other non essential value added stuff too, as MS rather overemphasised during their initial on3 presentations. PC does have similar (in effect/ result) practices which are put up with too- CPU throttling and even turning cores off, video card rebranding so the 8800 exists in four different 'generations' and the like, large profit margins for premium cards etc. They're different economic models since PC has no central authority to charge license money*, they want to fit budget, medium and high range product ranges in to maximise coverage and profits and they'll massage their product lines to achieve that, if necessary. If they felt they could license graphics cards- and they'll likely try at some stage- via a below cost sale and periodic fee they would do so. Fortunately that is practical anathema at present. *Well, there's the 30% that a DD vendor will take off every sale on PC, which is considerably more than the ~10% licensing fee. But it isn't levied by a central authority unless you count steam as such.

The latter is referring to the 'entitlement' argument, I believe, why do gamers feel entitled to... a working game, refunds, whatever. It's an utterly illogical shilltastic argument, but it is also very common, depressingly so. Basically, it isn't a problem with the journalists or the product, it's just a problem generated (unfairly) by those complaining. More generally, the big difference between journalists and interested parties of any sort is that you don't really have an expectation of 'ethics' from an interested party, like a game publisher, their obligation is not to be 'ethical' but to make money, publicise the game or if the interested party is an 'interest group' rather than a commercial one, to push their agenda. Companies will be ethical so long as it's compatible with making money, legalities and (to an extent) with generating intangibles like goodwill, but there's no real expectation of anything beyond that. That is why publishers sometimes tend to get lesser flak over such issues- though for Arkham Knight WB is still getting massive, and deserved, flak- people simply expect them not to really have their best interests at heart, whatever they say. In contrast, journalists, at least theoretically, do have an obligation to ethics and to 'the truth' rather than to making money- they fundamentally ought to be a disinterested party. Ill thought out arguments against refunds parroting those made by others and ignoring that piracy will always be cheaper and easier than refund rigmarole strongly suggest that the person is not a disinterested party but an interested one. From a disinterested/ logical viewpoint there's very little to dislike about a refund policy, especially on a DRM system like Steam where removal of the refunded goods can be enforced.

To put it in perspective, if someone decided to pull all movies from their store featuring the Confed Battle Flag it would include movies such as Glory, if they pulled all TV series it would be toodles to Ken Burns' Civil War series etc. Every time corporates pander to sjws their knee comes straight out through the top of their desk- though its utterly unsurprising a hipster sjw outfit (slave labour based production notwithstanding and to be ignored, can't have sjw without the requisite hypocracy after all) like Apple knee jerks like they've been wired up to mains electricity if they think there's some PR in it. Plus as others have pointed out, veneration of the confed flag is a symptom, not a cause and this is all feel good treatment of an easy symptom because dealing with the cause is hard, might require some self examination and require some actual changes to be implemented after some proper thought is put into it. Far easier to blame anything else and pretend that it can be fixed by hand waving.

Could have at least picked some gaming examples instead of Rocky. Did Mike Thorton give up after he was betrayed by his employers, nearly killed and had everyone under the sun misspelling his name? No, he persevered and kept going, succeeded then went off on a speedboat into the sunset with his love interest. And yes, I'm counting Steve Heck as a love interest, he's the most bromantic guy in existence. Evils of capitalism? Try playing Baldur's Gate where your equipment falls apart and you're trying to scrape up the money to get a resurrection from those extortionate Goldman-Sachs wannabe charlatans- but no, if you actually disbelieve you're going to The Wall, and not that cushy Game of Thrones winter holiday park wall either. To quote the well known libertarian and agnostic Ronald Reagan: Mr Kelemvor, tear down that wall!- in the local temple of Ilmater where despite being a destitute dragging several corpses around while half naked I need more signs of impoverishment to get a simple resurrect- that's real hardship. And where if you have SCS the enemies are all horrendous goose stepping powergaming munchkins, let alone that for the first dozen hours you're one critical hit from an xvart away from restarting or needing a resurrect. Still, persevere and you yourself can become a god, or retire happily with your love interest. Who will still get brutally killed if she's black, whatever you do. System Shock 2? You can't even simply pull the trigger on a shotgun half the time and have to hit people with a plumbing implement, and when you can pull the trigger the evils of capitalism and its lowest bid mentality mean it will stop working after a dozen or so shots then you get eaten by a bloody over sized spider or a howler monkey a supposed scientist describes as a 'chimp'. But persevere and you get... Ken Levine saying 'nah' in a poor in game engine video and a hook for a non existent sequel. Maybe not the best example. But hey, don't sell the rights to Sunset, you never know if the game might sell 1.4 million copies*, fifteen years after it would have been useful! Planescape Torment? You're a complete dong, albeit an amnesiac one, who has asterisked up the multiverse and has to live with that over and over. Or go fight in a perpetual (until a later edition tamely ends it, at least) war, forever, in penance. Merely quitting the game industry is pretty tame in comparison to fighting a perpetual demonic war, so chin up. *Seriously, System Shock 2 has sold 1.4 million copies since its re-release.

While steamspy isn't 100% accurate, it is a close approximation. As a game developer, I can confirm that the numbers on steamspy for our game is very close to the numbers that were sold on steam. Well, are you saying that he didn't get his "kickstarter backer" numbers from Steamspy after all, then? I mean they are obviously wrong as the numbers presented by the game devs themselves in the actual games are, of course, unimpeachable. If I had to guess the 80k for DivOS could come from early access + kickstarter, ie people who owned the game before its 'official' release. Of course, I'm not up to date on whether that is publicly queryable data, I'd assume so for a public profile but I don't use steam so can't really check. Easy for someone else to though, if a game has a 'purchased on' date visible it would be trivial to get early access sales numbers. In any case Steamspy ought to be pretty accurate in most cases, statistically speaking it's doing the same thing as political opinion polling. Its inaccuracies will be the intrinsic sampling error all polling has, which is why some sales figures seem to go down sometimes; and whether there is a fundamental systemic bias in profile availability, ie it can only poll public profiles, not private ones. If there is a substantive number of private profiles and a significant difference between what they vs what public ones own then you get inaccurate estimates, not really anything that can be done to fix that sort of error either.

I'd not seen that, i've just looked up the clip on Youtube and must say I might purchase the Blu-Rays and starting watching the Next generation if they're of the same quality as shown there. Thank you. That is a very well regarded 2 part episode (unsurprisingly it's one of my favourites) so they definitely aren't all that quality- especially so in season 1, so be warned there. Overall though TNG is well worth a watch and has held up pretty well.