Zoraptor

Yeah, it's kind of baffling to be told that Sir Jerry Mataparae is of critical importance here and part of an oppressive system when 99% of what he does is ceremonial stuff like going to D-Day celebrations and opening new buildings. He may be part of an oppressive system depending on perspective, but his position is so peripheral to that system compared to basic staples like political parties and all the run of the mill political stuff (lying, pork barelling, other vested interest pandering etc) inherent in any system that it just feels peculiar and that the detractors have zero practical experience with the system they're criticising. It's just not a big deal unless you're rampant on equality, and there are far bigger fish to fry on that front. It makes perfect sense and has perfect syntax in English. Review your reading comprehension please. But since you asked so nicely, we've had a succession of extremely good Governors General specifically because the appointment is not generally a political one. But we have the usual array of utterly crap politicians, and 'celebrities'. If we had a President we'd inevitably end up with those crappy celebrities and politicians as President precisely because the people who become GG are not celebrities or politicians, and stand no chance of being elected despite being extremely good and little chance of actually wanting to stand either. Your first clause is grammatically incorrect, review your syntax please. We may well have puppets here, but the GG has so little power that nobody would bother with him. He doesn't even make political pronouncements, he isn't appointed by the Queen (also true in Aus) and he's basically there to be an apolitical head of state. He doesn't even work as a sop puppet, he just isn't important enough. It may be difficult for someone from a country with an executive head of state to understand, but ours has basically no power at all. And there are no implications in a populace being happy with a constitutional monarchy. Republics gave us George W Bush/ Barack Obama, Bob Mugabe, and of course, Adolf Hitler. Drawing conclusions on a populace via a single narrow criterion is not very sensible. While I'm unhappy about the direction we're moving I'd still put our record of overall freedom up against anyone's except perhaps the scandics*, who are all constitutional monarchies too; and the reasons I'm unhappy are down to politicians, not ER or Sir Jerry. *Plus Finland, not technically a scandic and not a CM.

China views the US as a rival and for ideological/ political reasons wouldn't give the US good PR even if she lived up to the rhetoric. And India is already a democracy, how that is viewed by Indians will be whole orders of magnitude more influenced by how the Indian democracy works rather than how the (markedly different) US republican model works; as well as by things like the US response to Bhopal. If they wanted to cast aspersions on/ slur the US then there's plenty of evidence to do so without this report, it's just a handy reference guide for stuff people already know and the local stuff will trump all. And really, if the US does torture, murder etc then it would be good that other countries don't try to mimic them, and good that they would lose influence. Because any ideal country wouldn't do such things. But, any honest appraisal will separate the good things about the governmental system from the bad things done by the governments it generates, and if the US links loss of influence or goodwill to its behaviour it may improve that behaviour, though far more likely they'll just try and make sure no one knows about it. That there's any chance at all of benefit is down to part of the system actually working for once though what should be the other parts, enforcement of rules and punishment of those that broke them almost certainly won't happen. Brazil is an interesting mention though, since a roughly equivalent report on the excesses of the (US supported, natch) military dictatorship there was released the same day as the US torture report. And that will be the report that mostly influences Brazil's vision and thoughts on democracy as a system, not anything the US does directly.

Meh, why do I get the feeling it's people who live under the system arguing with people who don't here? There is nothing oppressive about Queenie or Constitutional Monarchy that isn't inherent to government of any kind. The royal family is irrelevant and has less powers than even non executive figurehead Presidents do. Gough Whitlam was removed by a Governor General who is the Queen's representative but chosen and appointed without her input and she had no influence on the decision, and the powers of a GG are determined by the country, not the Queen. So when Australia removed the powers used by the GG to dump Whitlam the Queen and GG had no practical say in the matter, it was done by Australians. If Jamaica wants to become a Republic the Queen has no say in it either- it won't solve Jamaica's problems, it's just a sop to nationalism, but the Queen can't stop it. I might in principle dislike the idea of having a royal family and a monarch, but practically I'd have Queenie and every single Governor General we've had in my lifetime over just about every single politician worldwide in even a non executive Presidential position. It has, for once, not been used as a political position at all, but a President would be, and we'd get the usual crappy politician foisted on us. We have enough of those, thanks.

Dunno about that. Internally, many in the US really do big B Believe in Truth, Justice and The American Way. The report will run into cognitive dissonance via obfuscation ("they've got it wrong in various ways we're not going to be specific about so you can disregard the report in whole, trust us, we're here to protect you from evil doers!") and special pleading ("but we only did it to bad guys!") with most clutching any straw to avoid admitting there was wrongdoing. Plenty don't Believe, but they will likely already know about waterboarding and have seen Abu Ghraib pictures etc In Europe it may appal some but it is likely that they already knew about it. It won't shift the politicians who pretty much definitively knew about it and in some cases actively encouraged and helped in it, that would require actual principles rather than smug rhetorical constructions about how much better we really are than other people. Anyone in power taking an actual stand against the US? Don't make me laugh. Peons with inconvenient beliefs can be safely ignored, as always. In the Middle East there won't be much reaction, most of the governments are US clients and most of the populations already knew about it anyway- much like Collateral Murder it may shock some softie western types who live in a bubble of self satisfaction and propaganda, but the people there already know about it and have a generally low opinion already. In the wider context there will be little reaction beyond some posturing. What are they going to do, apply sanctions? Send the US to the ICC? Yeah right... Worst they'll get is precisely what they've already got, some po faced Chinese diplomat who is rampantly trollfacing internally telling the US to live up to international norms and expectations and how very disappointed they are that the US are actually a bunch of despicable quasi Gestapo torturers who torture, oh the humanity. There should be consequences of course, the US already established that the punishment for waterboarding was execution seventy years ago when Japanese were executed for torturing US servicemen via waterboarding. There should be consequences for the lies and obfuscation. But there won't be. Instead the same people who believe in torture and that freezing prisoners to death is legal will get more powers to 'protect' their citizens from the evil doers while wilfully disregarding laws that are supposed to protect their citizens from them. Then people will wonder why police think they can shoot people with impunity, why politicians think they can imprison journalists to extort inconvenient sources from them and force ever more restrictive 'anti terror' laws, internet censorship etc upon people.

HD version of HOMM III is being made. And is looking perhaps the most pointless* HD do over of a mostly pointless craze. Graphical updates for a game where graphics are irrelevant (say different and you're implying MMH6 > HOMM3 and thus should be fired into the sun post haste to protect the integrity of the species) and no expansions; but at least you'll be able to boast about your accomplishments on steam! *Unless you want to buy on tablet, of course.

It isn't that much better at university level- albeit I was running a 1st year gen ed/ cross course which was open to all faculties/ programmes, and since you had to take 2 gen ed courses for a bachelor degree you had quite a few people who knew little about the subject or didn't really want to be there but felt they had to- I'd estimate maybe a third out of around 250 students showed anything above trivial ability in critical thinking. No doubt they'd be better in their core courses, but supposedly at least one of a university's core principles is to teach critical thinking and there were rather a lot of "I don't want to think, just give me a list of facts to learn" comments from even A grade students. On an editorial note, the worst offenders in that respect the were Biology students, I'd been through their system not that long before and it was great from a lazy student's pov since you got beautiful spiral bound course guides where everything was laid out for you but it was also terrible because you had to do very little actual research or thinking (at undergrad level) to pass since it was all handed to you. I learnt far more critical thinking from the two ancient history (!) courses I took, and chemistry of all things, rather than biology but ironically the biology courses always got the highest ratings from students and we were constantly being told we should be more like them as a result despite them essentially being polytech courses. Meh, critical thinking takes effort and most people just don't want to do it unless they have to.

Seems most likely that AbleGamers got DDOSed in much the same way we would be if Obsidz announced that KOTOR 3 (exclusive to Windows Phone) and BG3 (exclusive to Wii) were in simultaneous development but PoE development had been handed over to Double Fine while Bethesda and EA were buying them out in a joint venture. They were likely to be getting hammered by (perfectly legit) page requests from both sides of the argument, so it's most likely they just got hundreds or thousands of times their usual requests and the service provider nuked them until their bandwidth resets.

I'd suspect they were running out of money and had exhausted what early access was giving them. Though I've also heard it was selling pretty well at least initially in ea- and that it was essentially release now or wait 6 weeks until after the holiday season had passed. Not a great time to release though, middle of a GOG sale and immediately after a steam one finishes and at a relatively high indie price point as well.

And lo, there was much well deserved butthurt. Here's hoping for more, edits by ideologues are the scourge of wikipedia. Depends on circumstance, as with most things. By most measures single payer (socialised/ state run) health services are both better in terms of coverage and cheaper overall than market driven ones.

In Chechnya? Might have been possible twenty years ago, but pretty much everyone agrees that both sides are competent now, if only because it's now Blue Chechens vs Red Chechens rather than unmotivated conscript cannon fodder like 1994. Pretty much zero chance that it isn't staged.

Dandelion has already been a playable character, in TW2. (would laugh if the other 'playable character' was in the style of those TW2 vignettes where you played Henselt/ Wossname/ battle wraiths/ Dandelion etc, cdpr would earn many troll points)

No way that's not due to corruption. The equivalent is called PERFing here, it's so prevalent that it even has its own gerundive. It was very common when there were complaints made against police officers for them to PERF out (sometimes using the actual incident as proof of stress/ mental problems...) so the complaint would not be counted as a complaint against the police themselves, all it takes is two doctors to certify physical or mental problems to qualify. Dodging complaints that way has dropped off a lot here recently though, and we're seeing a lot of actual convictions- last few were for demanding sexual favours and selling large amounts of confiscated methamphetamine. But in any case, if someone wants to leave the police or go private PERFing gets them their pension early and qualifies them for a lump sum payment as well, plain early retirement or resignation doesn't. I'd suspect the situation is broadly similar in the US, albeit ours is a national police force rather than the more local US model. 'Friendly' retirement schemes aren't really corruption, though dodging complaints using it probably would be little c corrupt.

Yeah, blocking South Stream was just plain stupid. We're worried about energy security and problems with transit via Ukraine so... we'll stop a pipeline that would provide energy security, because, um, reasons. So now instead of EU members like Bulgaria getting transit cash it goes to Turkey. Two thumbs up there, euromuppets!

Definitely, and stores should be free to stock what they want as well. So far as I am concerned the only real problem with journalists voicing their opinion in support of the matter is when they've been simultaneously stridently opposed- or would obviously be stridently opposed- to having the same tactics used against groups they do agree with. Writing to Target or Te Warewhare to get R18 games pulled is fine, them pulling them is fine; but so is the targeting of Gawker's advertisers etc by the other side. I think the Warehouse's stance is pretty stupid and won't last anyway, as it removes pretty much all cable US drama content HBO etc from shelves and a fair bit of British too, craploads of movies etc. They'll quietly backpedal to case-by-case after Christmas. The only way it would not be fine is if it were a governmental ban, which is usually handled by refusing classification, or widespread enough to actually mean something. Funnily enough the chief censor here has been complaining about games being available for sale without being classified via DD and online games for a fair while (eg last month, back to 2009) though obviously GTAV doesn't fall into that category.

It isn't really moral panic at all since the 'Family First' lobby here really is very weak compared to either Australia or the US; it's near pure PR. They're doing a rebranding exercise to try and get rid of their reputation for selling any old cheap unreliable tat and the decision was mainly based on that. Also, the Warehouse is our equivalent of WalMart- and WalMart has a policy of not stocking adult rated games/ videos (some)/ music. It's pretty stupid, but companies like aping the most trivial trappings of success.

Yeah, and they sent me a GOG key as well. Glad I told them I didn't want a steam key, at the time I was very close to just telling them to go asterisk themselves instead.

Not really. Anakin, the clearest example, wasn't grey. He was first and foremost an idiot, he was also immensely selfish. And in the end he made his own big D Decision which was very much a binary break, and stuck with it, no matter that there had been a few wobbles prior- in the movies, only really the sand people chop chop being one. The only morally grey part was the (very) subsidiary string of the separatists being manipulated rather than 'evil', and there we knew from the beginning that the Republic would become the Evil Empire, not the separatists. There is a fundamental difference between prequel and original trilogy in terms of the situation of their storylines. In the PT you start off with the 'pure' power structures and people who get corrupted to the 'evil' stuff you see in the OT. For both the Republic itself and Anakin in particular there is some moral decay before hand but both have the critical decision point of no return ("I love democracy"/ Mace defenestration) where they switch from basically 'good' to basically 'bad', and they're both pretty clear in keeping with the morality of the setting in that repsect. I actually quite like both AotC and RotS, but the writing and especially the Anakin/ Amidala stuff is excruciating. The only really good overall performance in that entire trilogy is probably McDiarmid, and he has the advantage of being able to alternately mug the camera like a pantomime villain ("where's Sidious?/ He's behind you!"/ "oh no he isn't"/etc) and chew scenery with relish. But while Lee, McGregor, Portman etc are all capable of good performances not even the ghost of Sir Larry Olivier himself could have made something like the Anakin/ Amidala picnic on Naboo anything other than cringeworthy, due to the horrendous dialogue. Said it a million times, but the ideas in the prequel could have worked. He needed a good script editor and a good director who were not afraid to challenge him, but he picked yes men who didn't. One capable person who was willing to tell George that x was a load of bullasterisks when necessary and the prequels could have been immeasurably better.

Contextually that really needs something about Hulk's '4" python'... Yeah, kickstarter should itself not be OK with 'daisychained' kickstarters where people end up on-donating their funds to a third party, that's outright scam waiting to happen every bit as much as taking money for a project you have no intention of completing. If it isn't actively prohibited it certainly should be unless specifically mentioned in the pitch as an ancillary goal (like kick it forward).

Hmm, sounds like oby has a great career waiting for him in the BBC/ IISS then. :smug:

But how will I complain about ME4 being consolised trash if it doesn't have a PC version to complain about being consolised? How can I complain about the poor RPG systems, bad dialogue, romances, how it was totally not worth buying, too short but also too long and replete with filler content, unimaginative yet also too much departure from the first three games and how I hated every second of the 140 hours I spent on playing it through 7 times just to make sure it was rubbish? That's the best part about Bioware games, and I'll be missing out without a PC version. I won't even be able to make a nebulous and poorly formed complaint about Origin! Typical modern Bioware, wouldn't have happened in their glory days under Reg and Gray.

That isn't really accurate, the 'bad debts' in terms of sub prime were absolutely known and designed to be 'bad debts', and it was known that derivatives were based on them. The big issues were that banks- and more pertinently the ratings agencies that were supposed to monitor them that provided the independent label of them being safe- thought they had a golden goose to get money from a new market and turn a 3% roi into a 10% one, and that there were no real consequences for them when it turned out the goose had died. People still listen to Moodys, S&P etc as if they know anything when they blithely labelled derivatives as AAA and the banks- in general- got both a bail out and maintenance of their special status. The problem is not with fraud or criminal behaviour, the problem is that these people were morons. They believed they had developed the perfect system when in reality it was just another pyramid scheme, and have had no effective consequences for their actions. Not even a decade later and you already have people buying houses in places like London on credit- with no intention at all of anyone actually living in them- just to sell to some other person functioning on credit six months later. It's moronic, irresponsible and traps people like the perfectly innocent single house owner who ends up with negative equity when the bubble bursts, as well as all the people who cannot afford accommodation at all, and the taxpayer who ends up with their economy in recession when the bubble inevitably bursts. But it looks good in a narrow economic sense in the short term, so nobody wants to fix it. We've got a far bigger welfare state than the US, but our debt: gdp ratio is way lower and would be even more so if we hadn't had a city flattened by an earthquake. And it ain't just Norway with their oil cash, all the Scandics are in the same situation as we and Australia are, far lower debt levels despite more welfare. Welfare is not a large contributor to economic malaise because welfare gets spent, it goes into circulation in the wider economy. Indeed, cutting welfare usually intensifies recessions because it removes money that is being circulated which hits businesses leading to more layoffs, while people with excess cash tend to sit on it and cut spending in recessions those on low wages cannot cut spending unless forced. The problem with the high debt European countries and the US is the same as with the banks- they've been run by morons, whether left or right wing. Ideological morons, short term vision morons, political benefit before actual benefit morons; people who think that the good times will last forever so never make hard decisions to actually pay down debt when they can. And that is irrespective of left/ right divide; our left party reduced debt massively last time it as in power, our right wing one runs massive deficits, cut taxes for the rich and raised GST during a downturn which actually turned it into a depression etc. Our left wing party wants to raise the retirement age (which is essential in the medium term, along with a capital gains tax to stop looney tunes housing speculation that should have come in yesterday) but the right wing one wants to keep it where it is. And you have plenty of right wing US politicians handing out massive corporate welfare packages- overpriced military contracts, agricultural subsidies that favour massive conglomerates etc etc.

Heh on that US one, I got Green (91%) on everything except environmental issues, where I was a Republican (pro offshore drilling, no subsidies for wind power, no subsidies for truck conversions did that I guess). I also got 88% Democrat and I'd never have picked that as an outsider looking in, couldn't see myself voting for either main US party, except perhaps to spite the other. There's inevitably a big author/ question bias in these things. For example, Political Compass has me nowhere near any NZ political party (I'm way at the lower left) while the local version of VoteCompass has me pretty much spot on Labour. That is mainly due to better targeted questions on local issues and topics like capital gains tax and raising superannuation ages. I don't like the idea of people taking these tests seriously though, precisely due to that bias. It'd be far too easy to either game them as a political party or for the authors to write them with a(n un)conscious bias to direct people towards one party or another.

You are a: Socialist Anti-Government Non-Interventionist Bleeding-Heart Progressive Collectivism score: 67% Authoritarianism score: -33% Internationalism score: -33% Tribalism score: -83% Liberalism score: 67% Genuine lol at that, especially the last bit. Guess I should be glad there's one political compass type test where I don't come out as an anarchist.

I think you'll find more people subscribe to "Ignorance is Strength", though.

It's a bit of a stretch calling an Ocker frigate typically 'western' in any case, they made some for us and they're pretty rubbish. Not as rubbish as the submarines they built (loud doesn't cover it adequately), but crap anyway.