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Zoraptor

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Everything posted by Zoraptor

  1. Wikipedia is wrong, plain and simple. Can't say I am surprised since most self identified anarchists are left wing and most anarcho capitalists self identify as libertarians nowadays, but anarchism is and always has been left/ right agnostic, its opposing pole is authoritarianism (also left/ right agnostic). Your thesis is also fatally flawed. For example, abolition of hierarchy is not a left or right tenet at all. In theory Capitalism supports the abolition of rigid hierarchy, in perfect, theoretical capitalism hierarchy is also perfectly fluid, those with ability rise to the top whatever their start in life due to their achievements and the support of the market and everyone is rewarded by the market according to their contribution- perfect social equality because everyone has an equal chance of achieving success. That would make capitalism left wing...
  2. I don't think there's anything suspicious about all the COR articles coming out at least, she probably has sent out a press release and they're spread over two days. Sent out a press release to sympathetic eyes, no doubt, but it doesn't look like "Gamers are dead" pt 2 in that respect, more like Fallout 4 announced!!! articles would be collusion with Bethesda. OTOH I have little doubt COR is... hmm. Unlikely to be unbiased, at very very best.
  3. Seriously bro, that's three passive aggressive questions (the first one, unquoted, was genuine enough). That's a cheap technique when Bruce does it and it's a cheap technique here. Take your own advice from the bottom one and just ignore the thread if it offends you or doesn't interest you. If mootykins and 4chan are so very insignificant the thread will be dead in a few days anyway. (meh, 4chan. Usenet OGs know where the original anarchic anything goes pseudo anonymous posting 'boards' were at, and they didn't have some all powerful 'admin' running everything. Until asterisking Google tried subsuming everything into asterisking 'Google Groups')
  4. In most places in the rest of the world the Democrats would be a right wing party with the Repubs being even further right, that explains most of it. The rest is Bush jr hangover, almost everyone outside the US loathed him, so anyone associated with him gets automatically disliked. I didn't actually mind Romney particularly, he gave the impression of being a moderate guy saying immoderate stuff because he needed to fire up the core support. I suspect you'd get significantly different results if you asked "has Obama done a good job?" vs "has Obama done a good job compared to how McCain or Romney would have performed" from non US people.
  5. It's also an opt-out, not an opt in. And it's opt out for a very good reason, most people won't opt out so they get the benefit of one click impulse buys while saying that the option is there not to store details. In theory it shouldn't make a difference and it should be securely encrypted in any case, but it only takes one site with crap security even if it doesn't store CC if someone is using the same username/ password then you can potentially just log in and look the CC info up. I far prefer estores like gamersgate or GOG that don't store your details under any circumstances to those that you have to opt out of. Only one I use that has my details stored is Amazon, and that's because I use my Brit CC there and it has to be registered to work in any case. Having said that, if you're dumb or unlucky enough to get a keylogger or trojan none of that is going to help, with or without the additional security features like the non embossed non retained security codes.
  6. Six years of free money helps a lot, shows why they spend so much time trying to make sure the USD remains the world's reserve currency, with the amount of cash being printed they'd be half way to Zimbabwe if most of the world's lenders didn't have a stake in the USD holding its value. And a lot of people have simply given up looking for work so aren't officially counted as unemployed any more. It's ironic in a 'Yes, Minister' kind of way, but unemployed people going off welfare even if they are not employed is a good statistical result for governments as the unemployment rate goes down when those (still in any sensible definition) unemployed are off books as unemployed. Most of the fundamental problems are still there, Too Big To Fail Banks have just got bigger, income and wealth imbalances, massive indebtedness, lack of genuine competitiveness. The US economy looks better than that in Europe, but it's mostly because the buboes have got a good layer of makeup put over them, they're still suppurating and oozing underneath. Still, Obama is better than McCain or Romney by a country mile, faint praise as that may be, he's just not as good as he should or could have been and a massive disappointment when measured against that yard stick. Far too much vacillation, far too much dreaming of bipartisanship when his opponents had not interest in it etc. Still, the Repubs will probably be judged worse by history, not least for their utter lack of class about losing to a black guy.
  7. It's the "progressive stack". A white male is mocking the religion of people of color. Thus "punching down". Thus unacceptable. The justification they would use would be broadly equivalent to Star Trek's Prime Directive. It's fine to influence your own people (The Federation/ The west) because that's done on an equal footing but others must be left to develop as they see fit without outside influence because of an imbalance in power. It doesn't really work in ST and is very routinely ignored in plot; certainly doesn't work in the real world either, outside of theory. It would be interesting to see if Gene Roddenberry were still alive if he ended up in the extremist SJW fringe, some of his stuff in ST original was genuinely progressive (ie in a good way) but some stuff in TNG ended up being almost parody progressive.
  8. Steam has been hacked twice, was using a poor encryption algorythym at least one time they were hacked (at least they salted though, so they were better than Sony. Now there's a company that can be blamed for being security numpties) and had an exploit identical to that mentioned in one of the OP articles that was unpatched for ages. And up until a couple of days ago it could totally Pool of Radiance your HD if you were using Linux- not really a bug either since the comment on the code made it clear the writer knew it was a stupid dangerous shortcut, but put it in anyway*. Realistically though, there is nothing comprehensive any company can do to protect against people who use the same username and weak, always so very weak, password across every single account they use. And who, of course, swear blind that they haven't done that and always use a strong password, regularly change it in any case, have never fallen for phishing scams or installed unknown programs, didn't post on facebook saying they were away for a week that time they got burgled etc etc. They'll always insist that it is not their fault, that the company has been breached rather than them. Origin has proper security- as much as it can have, and pretty much identical to that steam has now- in place, but people bear responsibility for taking at least basic precautions themselves and if there were a general breach there'd be far more cases at the very least. They just make an easy target. Sheesh, Steam got busted monitoring people's internet traffic via dns and the press thanked them for it when they claimed it was an anti cheating measure, had it been Origin it would have been evidence that EA were trying to drink your soul. *Which is why having a client- whoever makes it- with all its added vulnerabilities and idiosyncracies is stupid, but that horse has well and truly bolted.
  9. I'd imagine that both Disney (to promote the new movies) and GOG (because they would be most popular and they have a limited title contract) would prefer a lot of Star Wars titles to be released over most other titles. SW is certainly the LucasArtsFilm franchise with the greatest popular resonance and current exposure- even though they also made a lot of sentimental and critical favourites outside of SW as well, especially in the adventure genre. (The three non SW games already released are Sam and Max Hit the Road, Indiana Jones/ Atlantis and The Secret of Monkey Island)
  10. He's right though, constant Russification of threads is boring- though I'd say that anti-CH protests there at least are as relevant as the pro ones elsewhere or the antis in Pakistan or Niger. On crowd size, I'd very happily accept a scale of very big rather than a number*. I would not personally be surprised by 1 million as Kadyrov has a lot of clout and the patron system where you turn out to show solidarity with your leader is very big in the Caucasus, but 500k or whatever are all plausible as well. Estimating crowd size is certainly inaccurate and prone to over/ under exaggeration both genuinely and or broadly PR/ narrative fulfilment reasons. *My favourite crowd estimate 'yeah right' moment was for a 'Christmas in the Park' concert they have here annually. We'd get ridiculous estimates in the mid hundred thousands. Right up until someone pointed out that it was meant to be a charitable event, and if 500,000 people really turned up the average donation was 30c per person making us rather extreme skinflints. Next day the number was revised down to a far more realistic 70k.
  11. You could have some fun with that logic though. Watch V for Vendetta, dob Hugo Weaving in for being a dangerous anarchist plotting to destroy Big Ben... And isn't Baldwin's character actually buds with a black guy in FMJ? Haven't seen it for probably fifteen years so my recollection may be off.
  12. If you write 20-30 articles stating much the same thing you have 20-30 articles from 'authoritative' sources that can be cited on Wikipedia or by other articles as 'proof' that GG is Anders Breivik/ ISIS/ Torqemada/ Celine Dion/ Pauly Shore/ Vlad Tepes/ Sauron/ Darth Vader/ cultural marxism is a nazi plot/ whatever; as well as the very important aim of Establishing the Narrative. So you can write 'neutral' encyclopaedic phrases like "Gamergate has been compared to ISIS, Genghis Khan, Pol Pot and Ming the Merciless [1-20] ". It's PR 101, get the message out, stick to it, repeat it and brook no compromise. Circularising things so that it appears there is widespread or even universal (except those evil doers, of course) support is a very useful technique for that. That is how any pressure group functions. Including GG at least to an extent, though obviously more via self publishing and a few select publications rather than concerted media push; and without the obvious authoritarian preaching of the cultural marxists.
  13. I've only seen Bowling for Columbine of Moore's films, and there he grandstanded and mugged the camera making it all about him in a manner which was pretty disgusting. And counter productive too, I ended up thinking Moore was a cretin and feeling rather sorry for Charlton Heston- I'm pretty sure that wasn't the intended result. On Russia, there is a fair amount of domestic support for the measures and they are applied even handedly. The Al-J news report had some rather better angles on the crowd, and it probably was about a million as Kadyrov was aiming for. Guess it's just another example of politicians obeying the rules of the political game and giving the people what they want (that's the argument for Cameron and Obama wanting to sniff your underwear draw to prevent terrorism being OK, after all...)
  14. That's like saying if the guy down he road is a burglar and manages to get away with it- or even not- then I'm being punished for not being a burglar myself. There's no punishment for being good, you just accept that there will be punishment if you are bad. What a criminal does is largely, since you do have certain extra rights to stop people being actively bad such as self defence against assault, irrelevant to what you do. If I decide to get some of that great burglar action because my neighbour gets away with it that just makes me a criminal as well.
  15. In the books it's explicitly stated that Robb goes off towards Casterly Rock to attract the Lannister army and they do that by plundering and despoiling the area. It's a medieval army, they don't really need orders to rape and pillage, it comes naturally, and they were given those orders. It's somewhat changed in the TV series of course, but then the TV series is relatively, relatively, disneyfied. 'Liking' is irrelevant. In universe Robert and Eddard are the only two lords that really like each other (well, except Loras and Renly, heh heh)- for all the good it got them, the pair of morons. Respect is what counts, what the romans would call gravitas or what Crusader Kings would call prestige. Out of universe the viewers liked Robb, much good it did him and they may have hated Tywin, much good it did him as well but that is because one is written as protagonist, the other as antagonist. You're meant to like Robb and hate Tywin, basically. There's no real defence of Tywin going on, nobody thinks he is 'nice'. He's just not, in universe, evil. In universe most people would probably consider the apostate witchcraft user and human sacrifice purveyor Stannis or the guest right and liege lord betraying and proud of it Walder Frey to be far, far worse, and regard Tywin as being fairly typical in everything except his effectiveness.
  16. How evil Tywin is really depends upon how much you apply modern values or use the ones of the time. Robb Stark's army pillaged, raped etc their way around Lannister country every bit as much as the Lannister's did to the Riverlands- that's expected, and specific outrage at Tywin's conduct is mainly because he is an antagonist rather than protagonist. It's also expected to advance your family as much as possible, within certain social norms. By modern measures Robb Stark would be a war criminal as much as Tywin, in setting, real opprobrium is withheld for those who do truly despicable acts (usually regarded as being extremely dishonourable) and on that basis people like Ramsay, Roose, Gregor and Walder Frey would all be regarded far worse than Tywin, as would Jaime and Cersei if their full relationship were confirmed and they weren't in power. In a modern context Tywin certainly could be described as evil though, and is almost certainly some classification of psychopath. 99% of the time 99% of people wouldn't need to fear him, but that 1% really would; and if he ever got paranoid he'd be Stalin. Jon Snow is a bit of an emo muppet, but most of his muppetry hasn't been shown on TV yet. He is about as close as the series gets to an outright 'good guy' though.
  17. The only country doing worse is Sierra Leone, and even there the cases have levelled off according to the RC- and if the rate reduction continues the outbreak will be done in months*. And while it's certainly overly reductionist to simplify every action of the US to 'oil' I'm not sure that someone who was insisting the virus was actually airborne and everyone was lying about it/ it was going to rampage across the US and the world due to 'Obola' is an entirely rational thinking centrist themselves. *Yeah, unlikely since it's far more complicated than a straight rate analysis and extrapolation and there are dozens of factors; but if the doomsayers pseudo statistical 'look at the rates, it'll be infecting 30 trillion people a day in 2040!' panic crap is good for the goose then 'good news, everybody!' anti panic crap is good for the gander. Kaine Parker's sexy ladies thread is that way, brother.
  18. Protocol III is fully ratified and signed, they've signed protocol I & II but not ratified them. They have however signed and ratified the main GCs, the protocols are separate, later additives to or clarification of the main ones. Part of protocol I is relevant to pows as it clarifies the position of 'rebels' as pows; but for the purposes of this it is irrelevant since the Taleban were the legitimate government rather than rebels and thus covered by GC III (or IV, if the decision were made that III didn't apply) and it wouldn't stop the US arbitrarily deciding what was and was not a unlawful combatant. The GCs were written quite explicitly to try to avoid this sort of situation, where an actor uses a constructed argument to exclude people from them. We do. Because ultimately that's who 'enforces' any law. I don't murder, assault or steal because it is immoral to do so, not because it is illegal. Indeed, if I were to try my hand at any of those I suspect I'd have exactly the same thought process as any criminal- I won't get caught anyway. We have words like 'sociopath' for people who only follow the rules when its to their advantage or when they think they will be caught, and by and large people and by extension countries should not be aiming for sociopathy and set a spectacularly low bar when "at least we're better than Al Qaeda" is used as a yardstick. As for "but they do it"; well so what? So now countries aren't just sociopaths, they're five year old school child sociopaths. I think we can at least try and aim for a bit better than that, unrealistically romantic rose tinted spectacle wearer that I am.
  19. There is the shanley vs milo (and Linus Torvalds) malarkey as well. But that's pretty run of the mill internet provocateure vs random target X stuff and only really significant for some more sjw wtfness and hypocrisy- open source is patriarchal rather than collaberative, who would of thunk? and the best way to dox a gay guy is to... post his phone number and get him sent masses of gay pr0n. Fortunately patreon is looking into the matter so I'm sure there will be a strongly worded letter of warning sent at some point.
  20. I accept it as an explanation, but not as a justification. In effect I find that point to be at best parallel to the line of relevance rather than on it. Politicians are perfectly capable of refusing to follow public opinion when it's against their wishes, after all, so they ignore the 'rules' all the time and only obey them when it suits their purposes. Thus it isn't really a 'rule' at all- especially since the politicians are standing on the sidelines fanning the fear themselves.
  21. Nah. Not nah, as in it isn't the explanation for why, because it certainly is- at least if you have a charitable view of politicians- but nah as it's reasoning you can use to justify granting anything and everything, power wise, and as such I utterly reject it as a justification (as opposed to explanation) for anything. Mandatory DNA samples at birth, mandatory finger prints, 'thought chips' when they become feasible, a domestic informant network that would put the Stasi to shame, nerve stapling, purging the unbelievers, ethnic cleansing, eugenics- there is literally nothing you won't get if you accept "people are frightened of the boogie man and politicians bow to their stupidity" as an argument for stuff. From someone who knew intimately the process and how to manipulate it: Hasn't changed much since 1933, except for the labels, the enemies and the tools. And the PR spin. And the ease with which GCHQ/ NSA/ GCSB etc can listen at every keyhole; Goering, Beria, Himmler etc would wet themselves in ecstacy at the thought. So ultimately that does explain why in one sense, but the other reason why is because politicians are both hungry to accumulate as much power as people can be stampeded into (or kept ignorant of) granting or at best unprincipled and gutless enough to only defend free speech as a convenient PR check box. People are stupid, politicians take advantage of that. Statistically, I not only have far more chance of dying from lightning, drowning, flu, falling branches, suicide, earthquakes, car crashes, meningitis, anything; but if I had died of terrorism, here, then it would be 100% certain I'd been killed by... french spies.
  22. The US signed it (1955, according to wiki) The US decided that the Gitmo detainees were 'unlawful combatants' and thus certain provisions of the GC relating to active combatants did not apply (though rather ironically, those pertaining to detained civilians therefore should). It's legal sophistry really- while it might apply to AlQ detainees on a case by case basis the Taleban were broadly recognised rulers of Afghanistan and Afghanistan was a party to the GCs (from 1956, per wiki) and for obvious reasons you cannot simply declare another country's government and anyone fighting for it illegitimate to avoid having to treat people under the GCs. It also has provisions protecting those resisting foreign occupation who are not wearing uniforms etc which would also cover many Taleban. Really though, the justification is basically the Asterisk Cheney one- they're bad people, so whatever we do to them is OK. Including, presumably, the very many innocent people, but then it is Cheney, a guy who literally has no heart.
  23. Nah, it's your good buds in Saudi Arabia who are behind it. The US is just Not A Learning Animal. Few days after CH/ Belgium and everyone complaining about returning Syrian rebels causing crap in Europe... hey guys, we're training 'moderate' rebels. Don't worry though this time we'll be training actual moderates unlike a few months ago when our 'moderates' all went Al-Nus or ISIS, we're going to check their backgrounds and all sorts. In cooperation with our good buds in Qatar, Saudi and Turkey, who are totally moderate. So it won't be another bunch of moderates like we trained and helped in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya etc these ones will really be moderates, so don't fear, we've learnt from our mistakes etc. Stupidity, wanton stupidity. The difference between merely making mistakes and being an outright moron is that the moron repeats the same mistakes time and again, expecting a different outcome. Hint: when Saudi is intricately involved you aren't going to be dealing with moderates, you'll be dealing with loony tunes Salafi stone agers. The enemy of your enemy is only your friend if he's not actively your enemy, and Salafis are the enemy of, well, everyone who isn't Salafi. Please Yoda, after firing our politicians into the sun could you throw in the Salafis and any military commanders who think this crap is a good idea too? I'll name my first born after you. There are still plenty of communist rebels and 'terror' groups around to fill in the 'die religious people' atheist quota. But as JadedWolf says, it's all about giving yourself a justification for your violence, there are plenty of peaceful muslims, christians and atheists as well as those who will kill you for believing different.
  24. David Cameron is a grubby little fascist. Co-opting an 'attack on free speech' to justify your own, far more insidious and effective assault on free speech should be seen as grossly offensive, and his constant pandering to the Daily Fail set is ridiculous. As for Obama, he is outright persecuting people like Manning and Snowden who have done more to defend free speech than all his pontificating, vacillating and politically spun convenient sound bites could ever do even if they weren't designed to justify and enhance the US vision of TIA while allowing a vestigial, facile, trivial parody of free speech to subsist as a sop to those who think the ability to talk about unimportant rubbish constitutes 'free speech'. The most essential part of free speech is not having David Cameron, Barack Obama, Frankie Hollande, Pope Francis or Grand Mufti sitting on the end of a microphone listening and recording every utterance every bit as much as it was not having Stalin or Hitler listening in. Horrible, horrible little maggots the both of them- and most people will get obsessed with front pages of a small circ french magazine featuring Yoda annoying adherents of the The Force; all while nodding along to their crap and feeling good about how enlightened and superior our values are and how we simply must be in favour of free speech because it's us and we're the heirs of Athens and all that is good in civilisation. Dear Yoda, I'm sure you could fire our politicians into the sun. Please? And remember, do or do not, there is no try.
  25. Holy hell. I had a brief argument with the guy when he was here (I don't recall what about) and my argument at the time was torn apart in the space of a paragraph, but now I see he was going easy on me. Not his best work. I had virtually no objection to his previous GG piece, but this is, heh, problematic shall we say. He rails against 'the Gawker style' when employing an affected style himself, and the whole blog is replete with such stuff. Eg you certainly can 'punch down', in a national based publication, against a religion held by only around 7% of the population, a 7% which is definitively disadvantaged especially compared to the metro set epitomised by and which CH has as its main reader set. Indeed, one of his main earlier thrusts was that Chu could not comprehend the awesomeness of CH's satire because he couldn't speak french and thus lacked the essential context, so he has implicitly and explicitly said already that CH is aimed at the French (and hence, French Muslims), not the 1.6 billion worldwide muslims. Yet when convenient to his argument it's suddenly CH bravely taking on the whole, worldwide, 1.6 billion rather than the french 5 million- very Chu like logic there bro. Also, no mention of Judaism having 'special protection' in French law and that CH has sacked people for being 'anti Jewish' before. Really, 90% of it boils down to "I disagree with Arthur Chu and therefore he is a doody head", practically exactly the same as Chu disagreeing with CH and thinking they're doody heads, even using the same flawed logic and deliberate affectations to make the (reverse) points. (Note: I actually agree with most of what he says, Chu's a dismal writer with poor logic, and people should have the right to be asinine obnoxious morons, a right I'll happily defend with absolutely no intention of ever using it myself gratuitously. You'd just hope that most reasonable people would choose not to exercise that right, and would accept other people's right to call them asinine obnoxious morons when they do exercise that right. Note2: I do speak French to a reasonable level, am hard to offend and it's very infrequent that I get offended on someone else's behalf, since that's a monumental conceit to presume what others find offensive. So I have basically nothing in common with Mr Chu and don't agree with any actual limitations on free speech beyond the obvious ones: public safety, slander etc)
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