Zoraptor

No. Because the other part of the equation is the practical enforcement of it being a service*, which can only be done with drm. With a drm free game it doesn't matter what they say, if you get banned or if GOG goes out of business or whatever, because you can always install from a backup and there is nothing that can be done to stop you doing so; to all practical considerations you own a product and aren't just leasing a licence to play. That is very seldom true for a game bought from Steam. *Also depends where you are. We're lucky enough to have software defined legally as a product rather than a service here, which puts it under the Consumer's Guarantee Act. Hence even Steam is forced to have a proper refund policy, though we're about the only place to get it.

Top Gear USA is also made by the BBC. As much as replacing the hosts is likely to be a trainwreck of epic proportions TG makes the Beeb 50 million profit a year and they have extensive contracts to supply it overseas. If they don't at least try replacements they're out that 50 mill at least, quite possibly plus penalties for failing to supply contracts as well. The BBC will be utterly rubbish at getting replacements, the current crop was more in spite of the Beeb rather than because of them, a lot of potentially good people will not want the stigma and potential negatives of 'killing' the show/ following in such successful footsteps and there will be quite a push to get lentil eating hybrid enthusiasts in because, clearly, that is what people really want rather than dinosaurs. But they pretty much absolutely do have to at least try. If they could get May and Hammond to stay they might have a chance.

Project Eternity is that six syllables? Four? Five? I find haiku hard (I don't need a key, I'm just amused that I cannot for the life of me count syllables properly. Which is kind of essential for haiku)

It should have been out for 7 minutes but it isn't. Bloody euro/ americocentrism. If you went for antipodcentrism* you'd get games 12+ hours earlier! *technically possible

Probably. Andrew is a prize muppet, but there's no actual evidence of him doing anything with underage coerced prostitutes. Not Voltaire. IIRC both of Voltaire's most famous equotes are misattributed as he never said the 'defend your right to disagree' one either, that was a... biographer? I think. (Ironically the best sourcing for the first quote is supposedly a white supremacist convicted of child pr0n offences)

But he did help shape the Baldur's Gate series! Fancy forgetting that!

That is pretty much what happens at some point in every internet argument because it is beautifully circular. Both sides end up accusing the other of arguing in bad faith and each side wants the other to admit that, in effect, they don't really believe what they are saying. Since in reality both sides think they are being reasonable themselves (90% of the time, sometimes people really are just trolling or are actually being dishonest) you end up with a rather pointless argument that cannot be resolved and which only hardens positions further. eg aGG Accusation: You only like feminists you agree with! Well no asterisks, Sherlock, I like feminists I agree with and dislike ones I don't. If I agreed with some other sort of feminist I'd like them instead. GG Accusation: You're in your ivory tower dictating to the unwashed masses! Well no, I'm trying to persuade you/ give my view and you disagree with me (and of course chances are that both sides will think that that summary is deeply unfair to them)

Meh, it's deterrence. In order to deter- as opposed to bluff- you have to actually be willing to use the deterrence and make it obvious that you will do so. That is all that this sort of redeployment and Putin putting nukes on alert over Crimea are meant to do, make it obvious that nukes are on the table so some moron on the other side doesn't decide that they aren't, really. After all, the west's military planners and especially their more hawkish politicians have not always been on the best terms with reality over the past decade or so. Whether Russia has good reason to think NATO will invade or whatever is largely irrelevant, Russia has basically one big card to deal and that is the ability to reduce all those shiny, technologically superior equipment and fine, well trained, handsome and generally awesome NATO troops to greasy smears and melted slag if they're ever used against her. If NATO ever goes after Russia it will be an existential threat and nukes will be used, nothing surer, because ultimately that's what you have nukes for. At that point whether it escalates further is moot, the mistake has already been made.

None of the Bioshock games are much good as fps. B2 is probably best as an fps, and even it isn't all that good. Conversely, what they are very good at is creating an atmosphere and (as long as you don't pay too much attention) telling a story, things which most fps aren't very good at. It's been that way since System Shock 2 really, much as I like SS2 if you play it as a straight fps it isn't much good, you have to treat it more according to its Thief roots, savour the ambience plus play on a hard difficulty and not rush around everywhere blasting everything; much like a Stalker title, really. The Bioshocks are far more about standard fps gameplay which unfortunately they aren't very good at, they do have tons of freedom in terms of tactics but there's very limited point in using half of said tactics because, by and large, just shooting stuff works better and there are just too many enemies to be creative. The stories and philosophy are pretty decent though. They're not great in any absolute sense, and if you look at the detail it's all too frequently incoherent but for games they at least try to put something a bit more into the story than most do, especially AAA ones.

And (to an extent at least) supporters of Hamas as well. It's one of those catch-22s, if Israel imprisons people without charge (or shoots them or whatever) it's fine, as they're preventing terrorism. If the PLO does it they're arbitrarily imprisoning people without cause and are Evil!!!- but also, if they don't they're allowing terrorists to roam free and are therefore also Evil!!! It's a perfect logical singularity from which not a single iota of reason can escape. Vologic at its finest in other words, and quite understandable in that respect since Volo always relies on FACT!s rather than facts- it's just a shame that so many people in international politics subscribe to exactly the same sort of 'logic'.

That's the authentic Bioshock experience in a nutshell though- looks great from a distance but if you spend any time looking at it in detail the whole thing starts looking just a bit shabby.

It's more likely that that bluster reflects his actual views. He's had plenty of time to act on a belief that there should be two states, and he hasn't done anything other than pay lip service to it so he gets invited to the right international shindigs and he gets more stall time. The only progress towards two states there will be with Bibi around is unilateral.

For this, it's a positive that he has so little time left. After all, Obama doesn't have to worry about being elected again and is seeking to establish some sort of legacy to be remembered by rather than his his current reputation as a generally photogenic but otherwise apathetic spineless jelly. Maybe he'll even end up post-hoc justifying that ludicrous Nobel Prize he was awarded all those years ago.

I'm slightly more upbeat about it as it will make it very difficult for anyone to argue to give (the) peace (process) a chance after this, which will greatly increase the probability of unilateral actions like recognising Palestine as a country. Realistically the past 15 years of peace talks have been stalling by Israel in order to get demographic facts on the ground established, neither Sharon nor Bibi had any interest in actual peace and it's now been made crystal clear to everyone. Once that is established it makes it far more difficult to stall, and far more difficult for the US to run interference. Who knows, maybe he's managed to annoy the White House sufficiently that some meaningful resolutions may even make it through the UNSC, certainly I can see them being more flexible towards Iran just to spite Netanyahu.

I'd suspect that they'd go for an agreement not to bring down the government with the Joint List rather than them being formally in government, that would cut down on problems getting other parties to join and is more compatible with what the arabs said prior to the election ie that they wouldn't join a government of any ilk. Even with just an agreement to abstain on confidence/ supply motions it would drop the coalition size required on the left to 54 from 61, assuming the Israeli system does not require absolute majorities on confidence/ supply issues. It may well come down to who ends up with the largest vote share, as they would presumably get first chance to make a government. Balance of opinion seems to be that Bibi has the advantage, even if it falls far short of being the great victory his speech claimed.

Not really what I was looking for. Batman got tied up/ captured pretty much every (bat) episode of the (bat) tv series, for example. The question was more about the reaction to being captured. Of those I would say that only the fourth one down comes close to being what I was looking for, which is something a bit beyond simply looking worried, the comparison would be more towards looking panicked or frightened as per the batgirl cover, and whether that tends to happen only* to secondary heroes, or women, or secondary hero women, or if it's more generally distributed. *I'd exclude examples like, say, Scarecrow from this, as their raison d'être is being able to panic even normally stoic characters.

To be fair, I can easily see that having a woman crying while being menaced by a (bad) guy with a gun in that manner has certain implications respective or irrespective of previous events- and that it would be unlikely that Batman or Superman or most other male superheroes would be shown crying in a similar situation. That might be because they're primary superheroes though, I don't know enough about the subject as to whether, say, Wonder Woman has been shown crying in similar circumstances or if she behaves more stoically as Bats or Supes would.

You're not obligated to agree with it, but it certainly isn't disingenuous. Plus you've been rather unfair in your implications, too. Sure, he says he did it 'voluntarily' having decided it was inappropriate, but that rather begs the question of why he made it in the first place if it didn't fit and was inappropriate- at some time his view must have changed, logically. That he has apparently been systematically blocking anyone who disagrees with his (new) view is relevant as it does not support that it's a decision he has come to by himself, but one he* has come to after listening to and being influenced by one side. Most significantly though, if it's disingenuous to post those tweets it was also disingenuous to imply it was a purely logical decision made by the artist alone devoid of external influences when it was certainly not*, and to imply that information had been left out when not only did the linked article mention it but so did the URL included in the initial post, to whit: '..comics-cancel-batgirl-variant-at-artists-request'. Can't blame the poster if people don't read the linked article, or even look at the url; that's the fault of the reader. *it's also basically impossible that it was solely his decision, covers are very heavily vetted by PR departments as they are usually the most prominent promotional material for a comic issue.

Yep, though that includes 'suicide'. Both the David Kelly ('committed suicide' in such an obscure way that many doctors aren't sure it's even technically possible to have done so) and Gareth Williams (committed suicide by locking himself inside a duffle bag, according to his employers the SIS, who didn't notice (!) he had disappeared for a week or more) 'suicides' almost certainly would have been labelled as political murder if they'd been in Russia- and of course there are those seven 'suicides' in six weeks that have happened in Ukraine, which their interior ministry have labelled as a good thing. Though that is also what nobody can quite explain about Nemtsov, why Putin would kill him when he has other means of control such as imprisonment, and why he'd bother assassinating someone whose only significance is that westerners liked him. Politically he was irrelevant and had been for 15 years, not really due to Putin either, western support is very much a poisoned chalice. Even the 2011 protests had very little support for 'liberals' despite what was said, unless said 'liberals' liked waving Russian Imperial Flags and Soviet Flags rather a lot. Still, it's rather a good example of how Putin is exactly as competent/ incompetent as needed to fit the narrative. Some days ago it was how the murderers would never be found and they should have been captured within hours, proof of Putin's involvement, now he apparently can't even find a proper patsy to take the blame, which is also proof of his involvement.

Yeah, he was looking pretty good for a dead deposed alien abductee when meeting the Kygryz President. Putin can troll without even trying.

Guess it's appropriate that on St Paddy's day we get mention of mythical creatures that guard pots of gold.

Or alternatively, you'd have Qatar, UAE, and worst of all by far, Saudi Arabia all with nuclear weapons a few years at most later. They'll all want the bomb if Iran has it, nothing surer. Yeah, other countries without nuclear weapons aspirations make 20% U235 as well. Pretty sure Brazil's annual production of it is a fair bit higher than Iran's entire accumulated stockpile was, too.

According to the IAEA Iran has converted its 20% stockpile and haven't made more. So they aren't enriching to 20%. So either Bibi or the IAEA (/CIA / Mossad) are spouting crap, most people's money will be on Bibi for that honour rather than the people who have been on the ground and who are experts in the matter. Not taking Al Jazeera as a reliable source in this case is pretty odd too, they have a very strong editorial dislike of Iran (due to being run and financed by the Qatari royal family; see their coverage of Syria, Yemen where they are stridently anti anyone friendly to Iran and- especially if you read/ watch their arabic output- pro some of the more dingbat sunni alternatives; though not quite as much dingbat fringe as Saudi), they aren't going to be saying anything positive about Iran just because.

Only one I haven't read is the last one. I'll probably read it at some stage, but at the moment I rather appreciate the feeling that there is something to come.

I tend to agree, hence why I stopped responding to all attempts to move the goal posts further some time ago. You can lead a horse to water, but sometimes you're better off leading it to the glue factory. Anyway, let's get back to the real topic: mysterious deaths of political figures. Apparently there has been an outbreak of 'suiciditis' in Ukraine, opposition figures appear to be particularly prone with six (or seven, since a prosecutor in Odessa 'jumped from window' today) succumbing to this unfortunate disease in the past six weeks. (Rather puts into perspective those Putin lists of a similar number over a 17 year period)