Zoraptor

And on something actually related to Nemtsov, it appears that one of those arrested (and the one who has confessed) is a member of a Chechen militia group related to Ramzan Kadyrov.

You didn't and haven't 'won' on one single point. All you've done is misrepresent, move off when shown to be misrepresenting/ goalpost shift, shuffle and repeat- as you generally do. No doubt next post you'll be back to claiming that 'not severe' means 'none' again, or similar. Oh wait, you do that again, further down. Oookay. So you post articles, defend articles, quote from articles and yet "didn't mention time frames". Then admit you actually did a couple of sentences later. Pretty much sums things up. I said I'd put my money where my mouth is and adopt an ostrich avatar for a year if the 6-12 months estimate were true- and I'll do so even if you had so little faith in wsj guy that you wouldn't reciprocate. Because I have 100% confidence wsj guy was spouting crap. And if your complaint is based on you posting that wsj article as some sort of detached academic exercise then, lol. Nope. Mine was a direct quote of an article you'd (supposedly) already read and provided a link to, made to refute the bald and contextually inaccurate '40%' claim you'd actually pulled from a paraphrasing blog. Uh, it was you who were fixated on the '40%' [sic] figure, not me. I was just pointing out that you were misquoting your expert. If you don't want that to happen then don't misquote him.

Funny how slow this sale was compared to the first ones. Seemed that just about every title went Jack Keane speed. Personally I'd far prefer that type of sale if they had a wallet system or escrow system, multiple small value purchases with transaction fees and currency conversion fees (hooray for stratospheric Aussie regional prices and no NZD currency option) are great- if you're a bank.

That it certainly isn't. For that reason I don't really like SCS as an example of 'good' AI as I tend to think of it as being 'hard' AI instead, and it really is a mod for repeat players looking for a challenge or at very least people who know the D&D systems well. It is probably close to what fighting a human controlled opposition that had previously played the game would be, in one way a big compliment but not necessarily a good thing in all circumstances since you have to fight dozens to hundreds of such battles while they only have to fight one. Personally I found that it just encouraged the use of exploits and meta/ foreknowledge and especially in BG1 but also in BG2 introduced even more 'haha' moments where your (low level, especially) party gets arbitrarily splattered and you just have to reload. End of the day a good AI should be challenging and exploit mistakes and the like, but should not be intrinsically and arbitrarily punishing. Most any commercial game is going to try and avoid AI that is too hard because when it comes right down to it most people want to win.

What a joke... While it's a policy which is certainly open to some... negative interpretation, that isn't a new policy. Been around since at least 2010.

Yep- went and complained about 'conspiracy theorists' and how much you hoped that people would be banned in the political correctness thread. Classy. "Nope, I said that economic sanctions would not severely impact Russia. The oil price is independent of the sanctions and unrelated to them, it's Saudi taking a dump on frackers." Well, that is an actual quote from me at least. It does not support your assertion that I said "that western sanctions is [sic] not hurting russia's economy" at all, just that sanctions were not hurting it severely. Again, show where I actually said that sanctions are not hurting Russia, not some fantasy land interpretation where 'not severely' == 'not at all'. "I'll throw in a complementary extra illustration: Bloomberg chart of rouble to oil prices- sanctions and counter sanctions applied March and August. As anyone can see sanctions had sweet asterisk all effect, the exchange rate almost perfectly matches oil prices- which is independent of sanctions." Yep. The exchange rate did barely flicker in April and August when sanctions were applied, and only dropped when oil prices did, and that is what was shown. It was your chart that didn't show what you thought it did, not mine. "Oh ffs, if you insist and since this is at least relevant to something I have said instead of your imagination. Your figure, 30% price increase. My figure 100% increase due to exchange rate." Yep, basic economics, just about the most basic of economics. Imports cannot mitigate a 30% price increase when the currency devaluation mandates a 100% increase. Again, your own expert (Kudrin) agreed with me on that and not with you Nope, I really don't want to encourage you to post any more. At least this time you managed to copy the link properly so I can actually check instead of including an ellipse in the url and turning it into nonsense worse than your shtick. And- of course- it's actually "up to 40%", as the actual quote, and not 40% as you stated. Plus a quote from the Moscow Suomi Times. Why not got the whole hog and quote VoA? And then "At his annual press conference, Putin blamed the usual suspects for Russia's mess. However, it is his policies or the lack of it [sic], and using oil and gas as a weapon to further Russia's geopolitical interest [sic] that has been responsible for the latest currency crisis. Alexi [sic] Kurdin [sic], a former finance minister and also an ally of Putin, told Financial Times on Monday that the sanctions have been responsible for 40% [sic] of the drip [sic] in the Russian currency." A barely literate 'quote' from a blog. Which, oddly enough, makes misquotes ("up to 40%", "kurdin") that mirror misquotes in your own writing. lol. lol. Unlike you I only make accusations I can prove. You've been disingenuous, at very best, misquoting and misinterpreting so frequently I can only assume it's deliberate, and I provide examples of how you are too. Well now, that really is projection when coming from someone who insists I said that sanctions would do no damage and the best quote they can find to 'prove' it is me saying it wouldn't do severe damage. Weird, I thought it was about Boris Nemtsov's murder... yep, says "rip Boris Nemtsov" at top. I guess I could say it's really about your rabid Putinphobia, conspiracy theories, fallacious and bad faith argumentation or whatever, but that gives you importance you really don't merit.

It totally does! But then again, so does "game journalism has a finite amount of resources, and when a large-ish portion of those resources is tied down in documenting the minutiae of the ongoing drama, coverage of somewhat obscure indie games is the first thing to get the shaft". Or "this guy behaved like an irredeemable ****ing **** in the process of voicing his support for GG, so maybe we shouldn't give him exposure" (different from being blacklisted for a pro-GG sentiment itself [although, if you'll forgive me for saying so, behaving like an irredeemable ****ing **** and being pro-GG seems to have an unusually large rate of coincidence, so it might seem tempting to conflate the two]). Yep. Which is why it (can be interpreted so as to) supports both sides' arguments with the same general level of correlation or logic. How it's interpreted is based almost entirely on what pre existing position the arguer has, and what weights they put on things like the gamesjournospro list and the like as evidence of journalistic collusion vs someone who follows Vavra/ Kingdom Come looking for information ad being disappointed there isn't any and looking for reasons for that. I personally don't agree that Vavra got blacklisted for being outspoken as I don't see sufficient evidence for it; but it is a believable interpretation, as are alternatives. A pro GG person will likely think it was blacklisting, conversely an anti won't; so it's just about the perfect encapsulation of why the wider argument is largely intractable/ insoluble.

FFS. You didn't actually provide any support for the wsj article. You clearly didn't read what you were linking to or deliberately misinterpreted it in the hope I wouldn't read them: eg the reuters article you linked agreed with me and my links and directly and outright contradicted the wsj article, to whit: "Russia is poised to exhaust its two reserve funds in 18 months if oil prices stay at around current levels of $50 a barrel" (your Reuters link, supporting what I said) versus your at current rate of spending, and given that the russian economy were tuned to 100 dollar per barrel oil prices, that $376 billion lasts anywhere from 6 months to a year that you/ wsj said. And you're still banging on about 'me' saying that western sanctions have done no damage? Prove I said it. You spectacularly failed to do so when invited previous. Indeed, you actually ran off when I looked at your Kudrin articles because, again, they supported what I was saying, not what you were saying. And they didn't have the figure in them that you claimed they had either, that 40% of currency depreciation was due to sanctions rather than oil price drops; the only '40%' figure was how much Russian imports had declined and how that would help stabilise the currency. At that point... You were either so afflicted by cognitive dissonance that you genuinely thought a Reuters article saying 18 months supported your 6 months to a year and not my 18 months to 2 years or you were deliberately posting links in the hope they won't be read and challenged. Neither is particularly flattering as an interpretation. Really though, if you want to relitigate this particular iteration of your, heh, 'wilful stoopid' shall we say? then take it back to the Ukraine thread where at least it's semi relevant.

Can't say that I care whether or not I get rotworm boots or whatever the unlocked bonus item(s) are. Presumably those who order the game later won't get them (for free) either. Wanting a 50% discount and all bonus items seems a bit, well, entitled to me, especially as the limitation was stated in the tier description. Having said that I have seen plenty of people saying that they found the nickel and diming distasteful so it may well have been- and I'd personally suspect was- counterproductive overall. But I think the far greater factor is just plain kickstarter fatigue and kickstarter cynicism becoming more prevalent (thanks, Tim) plus not really having a big name beyond a company that died well over a decade ago.

Sheesh that's (sadly typical) revisionism Grommy. I gave multiple alternative links to other sources showing that Mr Murdoch's Yellow was in the minority with his extreme negative view- indeed, you inadvertently linked to another one yourself later. Your entire argument was based on one outlier article, yet somehow it's other people with the, lol, 'conspiracy theory'. Nah. I'm not tired of 'conspiracy theories'. I actually find the term extremely lazy and to be used primarily by people who cannot argue properly as a cheap win, it's as bad as 'well your just wrong!' as an argument. Pretty much the only time I'll use the term is against someone who is oh so fond of it using it themselves, hence the :smug: Indeed, the only 'arguments' I find more lazy than 'conspiracy theory' are outright abuse, and "you must be paid to say that". I far prefer 'narrative following' or similar, it's more neutral since basically everyone does it, it doesn't imply that they're automatically wrong or paranoid delusional, just that they're human and as all humans do, like stories. You get people working back from conclusions and either ignoring evidence or having some sort of cognitive dissonance about things, but 'conspiracy theory' is just a lazy, unimaginative and really rather feeble label for a narrative that someone wants to discredit and cannot think of a better way of doing so. (Now waiting to be told how I was actually entirely serious and the :smug: meant... god only knows what. Given I'm complaining about working back from conclusions that would be most highly ironic)

Okay, let's say there's a correlation between him voicing pro-GG sympathies and receiving less coverage. It still does not imply causation. I mean, there are other perfectly legitimate reasons for somebody receiving less coverage after doing so. This is where personal biases come into play; I can name three alternate reasons off the top of my head that are not at all, or only tangentially related to him being pro-GG for receiving less coverage in this period of time, but if one does not stop and consider alternate theories, it's easy for one possible interpretation to seem like the only reason worth considering. As you said yourself, it does imply causation, though it certainly doesn't prove it. The usual sort of correlation != causation type examples are the old classic pirates cause global warming and the like, where two things are completely independent of each other. This was a developer supporting a 'movement' that a lot of journalists loathe with a passion and allegedly getting decreased coverage as a result. While it is effectively impossible to prove that any lack of coverage was related to support for GG it does make sense and does follow a logical train of thought, indeed it follows a logical train of thought whether it was a deliberate/ organised act (ie actual blacklisting) or just a subconscious 'asterisk that guy and his game'. So the implication does have a logical basis to it, as opposed to pirates and climate. But either way, it's impossible to prove, it just tends to fit the defining narratives of each side rather well.

Well yes, as a way of refuting someone who was quoting "So there are two hypothesis [sic]" it was perfectly on cue since it didn't fit either of the two hypotheses. The whole situation is, of course, perfectly set up for anti Russian bigotry, fanned by the usual suspects in the press. Arrests not made: well now, that's convenient! Arrests made: well now, that's also convenient! Anything and everything is indicative of conspiracy, working back from the premise that Putin controls everything that happens in Russia. Yes, and Obola deliberately tried to get the US infected with Ebola to further his lieberal agenda despite it having no purpose whatsoever. If Putin wanted Nemtsov out of the way he could have given him the Navalny or Khordokovsky treatment, indeed Nemtsov did exactly what got Navalny thrown into jail recently as well. Simply put, Nemtsov was far too unimportant to warrant assassination when easy judicial remedies existed. (There's a plethora of other 'as competent/ incompetent as needed for the narrative' examples around too. eg the whole Russian soldiers in Ukraine thing where everything is used as 'proof', even mutually exclusive stuff. There's 1000 of them. No, 8000!, No, 18000 soldiers there!!! What's that you say? Only 2% of captives/ pows have been Russian citizens (let alone soldiers)? Well, that's because the Russians are sending in all their modern equipment and slaughtering Ukrainians who cannot fight back! But, we also estimate we've killed 4000 Russian soldiers, because they're being used as expendable cannon fodder! Well, the Russians must be... using radio controlled suicide capsules to explain how only 2% of captives are Russian citizens but 66% of those who have died in the entire war are Russian soldiers, it's Putin so you know he'd do it! Though of course, to some it's pointing out those inconsistencies that is the 'conspiracy theory', not the spouting of the mutually exclusive/ implausible 'evidence' itself.)

And as if on cue, arrests made, two men of Caucasian origin if my knowledge of Russian surnames is accurate.

Man, I can't be the only person getting sick of all these tinfoil conspiracy theorists running rampant in the forums, can I? Russians, always exactly as competent/ incompetent as required by the desired narrative. If it were a fiction novel all the Dei Ex Machinae would make it an extraordinarily bad fiction novel.

Both are hedges and part of the same strategy. The default PCs that people buy are and will (almost entirely) come with Windows pre installed, as most PCs do. The steam machines are important and part of the same strategy because Valve's problem is two fold- MS control the OS ('solved' by steamOS) of most PCs and most PC makers pre install said operating system on their PCs ('solved' by steam machines with steamOS pre installed). A steamOS only strategy relies entirely on people either building computers and installing steamOS themselves or installing parallel to/ over a windows install, both of which many people will simply not do. As a strategy it's rather garbled though, and is neither one thing or the other. It's not a full on console strategy with standardised hardware that would reduce manufacturing costs but with the individual manufacturers selling pretty random configurations from rubbish to powerful but expensive; it isn't a strategy whereby they do loss leading hardware sales and it isn't one where they are likely to get mass adoption partly as a consequence of the other two factors meaning that their offerings will be expensive. At present it has almost all the disadvantages of the PC system with few of the advantages of a console system and some of the disadvantages of a console (I cannot imagine it would be easy if even possible to upgrade steam machines, for example)- basically it's an attempt to do things cheaply and have others do the work for what are likely to be minimal rewards.

Nope. It was meant as a hedge against microsoft Apple-ising their windows store. From what I've seen the current (well, November release) offerings are pretty rofl. Too expensive or too puny, there's no reason to buy except blind brand loyalty. They have no cost of entry beyond designing an all-in-one box, but also no standardisation and mass production advantages over something you can build yourself and especially over consoles. And I'd suspect the main market for them is those who do currently build their own boxes. Not many people will be gaming or building a new box with minimum spec such as i3/ R7 250x/ 4GB RAM, that wouldn't even play some released games let alone upcoming ones like TWitcher3.

Really? I thought they announced divine assistance courtesy of Pope Frank as they were bringing in a "PaPal" option. Or maybe Geoff Keighley was going to appear in some advertising for corporate pledgers. (The letter Y was a gif (?) and I've got them default nuked to stop tracking gifs.)

I saw plenty of people saying that the DOS (and P: E for that matter) kickstarter was shoddily handled, at the time. People were saying that DOS should have got multiple millions, the communication on P: E was poor etc. I suspect the biggest problem is kickstarter/ Early Access fatigue has well and truly kicked in so there is nowhere near as much intrinsic enthusiasm as there was a couple of years ago. Having said that they've still got just under three days to go, if they can replicate the beginning surge at the end they'd get close to the 1 million mark. Still less than it really should get in an ideal world, of course.

Citation They definitely (or at least it was a very convincing fake right down to altered bank records) were paying people to comment, because one of them was publicly complaining about not actually being paid the agreed amounts.

I read the first three books and that was pretty much exactly my reaction, so it probably isn't the translation's fault. I'd add rampant continuity errors as well. The author doesn't care about them, but to me they're the mark of a highly sloppy writer. OTOH they are worth checking out as a lot of people do like the Malazon books a very great deal.

Just blame it on Yeltsin, really. The west didn't help, but Yeltsin was just terrible and poisoned the well for any 'liberal'* successor. The neoliberal privatisations and kleptocratic oligarchs were stupid and stupidly implemented at least partly on western advice, but he could have said no. And he picked Putin as successor. The west wasn't obligated to help, their worst contribution was contributing deliberately to the sense of humiliation, triumphalism and then being such narcissists as to be surprised at the revanchist response. Which is ironic really, ask any western leader and they'll say that Putin has squandered/ subverted the Russian democracy Yeltsin bequeathed him, but they gleefully humiliated Yeltsin at every step and made him a laughing stock themselves. Which is partly why Nemtsov himself was such a footnote, too much association with Yeltsin, and too many western politicians trying to big him up as if western endorsement isn't politically counter productive in Russia. *except Zhirinovsky's incredibly inaptly named Liberal party.

Ooookay. roflcopters (better effort overall, still too obvious though)

Well, you can go look at some historical results if you like. Pretty sure Mr Kim or Saddam wouldn't tolerate a 5.8/10 for presidential performance (a C grade) or a mere 16% saying that things would improve (vs 45% saying they wouldn't), both results from previous polls by the same people while Putin was in office. Afraid you'll just have to face the FACT!s, Putin is genuinely popular. And it's largely the west's response that has made him so. If they weren't so keen on talking Russia down he'd have had far more domestic backlash, but nobody likes traitors and at the moment Cameron, Kerry et alia are managing to make anyone pro west look like a traitor.

Don't confuse not believing it's a necessity with it being a bad thing. It's a simple yes or no question, there is no need for the defensive deflection. I'd put 'black woman' fourth on a list of three things about her, behind being a racist and a pain the butt plus leader of Vault City. She isn't like Sulik or Marcus where their, uh, ethnicity has a major effect on their characterisation, she's just someone who happens to be black. If I were describing them then Tribal or Super Mutant would be near first because it heavily effects their behaviour, but for Lynette skin colour is not significant. Really, Jacob from ME2 would be just about the most memorable person in the whole Mass Effect franchise if skin colour (/ sexuality) were key to being memorable, as he is black and (potentially) gay as well. In reality he's about as interesting and memorable as a block of concrete and probably the least interesting companion in all three games- unless his skin colour and sexuality is considered important.

Ehh not really. I'd be pretty sure that is close to exactly what their reasoning was. You don't have to agree with it, of course, but I very much suspect they do quite genuinely believe that. Only real dissent from me would be whether people were just 'reporting on the article', there certainly seemed to be far too many articles doing that too quickly to be coincidence- but then again, it's not like people in general don't immediately leap on and enbiggen stuff they like and agree with even if they didn't have #DeadGamerTears to label it. I do kind of wish they didn't actually believe what they do much of the time, but that's a rather different sentiment. The 'Gamers are Dead' article had a basic, supportable premise- from a certain point of view. It was also poorly thought out and was, charitably, always going to be very inflammatory by its nature or less charitably, was deliberately designed to be such. In context it was deeply misguided in execution at least, if not in intent.