Zoraptor

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.

Last ep of Arrow was OK (well, if you don't mind the comic book logic of sending someone who is clearly insane off to become a government weapon), but the flashbacks have been a terrible drag so far this season. No doubt they'll lead up to something, but they're so slow. Both it and to a lesser extent Flash really need more focus or at least slightly less formulaic filler- though Flash has an excuse for that since it's just starting. OTOH Walking Dead is probably having my favourite season so far.

Not really. The manufacturer says that the sight can be fitted to a T72 fine. I might feel differently if there were evidence that the Russians used that sight or something that appears very similar on their T72s but at present you have a Ukrainian sight, a T72 model that both sides have access to and ER that both sides have access to. You also have the rebels grabbing a lot of military store houses and the like. For the second picture oby is quite right, the two white lines are Ukrainian id markers, there are multiple other examples floating around to support this. They could have been painted on after the tank was knocked out or it could have been a prize (there was a claim of a prize taken in the relevant area by Ukrainian (para)militaries, unfortunately at least two tanks of that type with Ukrainian markings have been knocked out in distinctly different areas) but that's an open question at this point.

Pardon me for being unsympathetic but considering how little the final product has changed the whole thing has been massively overblown.Crowd sourced products have repeatedly done worse by their supporters and got away without even half the outrage. Rather depends on the weight you put on the various features though, doesn't it? If you have crap internet, a data cap or various other possibilities (military deployment etc) you may not have backed at all due to that 'little' change in the final product, speaking from experience it is one thing to have to download a large file on a one off basis and having to have a persistent connection as well as large download and patching. Even if you simply backed it because of offline mode on principle- dislike of DRM, wanting to be able to 'own' games- you have the right to be pissed at them altering the agreement. I find the idea that you should kowtow and be grateful for what you get, even if it isn't what you asked for, ludicrous- and they were still touting an offline mode up until a few months ago. (Heh, I get the feeling that is Empire Strikes Back were released today you'd get a horde of people saying that Vader's "I have altered the agreement, pray I do not alter it further" was perfectly justified and simply reflects changing reality and the Empire is really still awesome, after all Lando still got some of what he was promised why can't he be happy with that and he never signed a contract just had a verbal agreement on aims, it was non binding etc etc)

On the blurry image? If I'm looking for the same thing you are I'd say it is there, slightly below and to the right of the second open hatch on the turret/ slightly above and to the right of the fourth ER block, very nearly obscured by the tree branch. Unprovable short of CSI's 'enlarge and enhance' technomagic due to the low res blurriness, but it certainly looks like it to me. Don't really know about being overly selective, it cannot be proven that it isn't a Russian tank, it can only be proven that it may be of Ukrainian origin so there has to be some selectivity. It isn't like it's a Leopard/ Challenger/ Abrams v T72 question where there is totally different hardware, you have to pick on narrow sets of similarities/ differences because both sides largely use the same equipment.

Would have thought so, though Origin's utility as DRM is limited as is every client that does not require always online. While the claim that denuvo destroys SSDs is distinctly sketchy they've admitted that it degrades performance significantly, which makes it crap anyway.

Starforce did damage hardware (CD/DVD drives), it was actually provable practically as well as theoretically. Some labelled it as FUD due to Starforce's 'competition' to prove it happened (pay your own flights to Moscow where you'd have a day to prove it on their picked hardware) which unsurprisingly got no takers. OTOH the denuvo accusations appear to be pretty much entirely bollocks, like the accusations of Origin spying from a few years back. And as always it's a shame so many 'antiDRM' crusaders appear to be perfectly happy with that well known drm platform, steam.

His first post is most relevant, since it shows the Ukrainians have a sight that matches (well, as much as can be told from a low res still) the one on the tank in question.