Zoraptor

Meh, that's exactly right when you have people insisting that nazis were socialists because their world view demands everything evil must be socialist and everything good must be capitalist. Extremists going to extreme, and will always insist that they're not. You'd think that the nazis were redistributing wealth from Jews to poor people rather than just seizing it for themselves or selling it off to cronies and that Ferdinand Porsche et alia were just code names for collectivist communes given the way some go on. Watching dedicated -ists pat each other on the back and agree that they see things clearly is always amusing though. (Still waiting for someone to spin selling dope to China while the people growing it starve as being all due to socialism. I'll give you a hand guys- if only those Indians had worked harder and educated themselves, put themselves through college and established their own businesses they'd all have been fine...)

Oh yippee, someone who thinks the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is democratic, has to be they called it democratic NSDAP was socialist because they call themselves that, it's been at least six weeks since the last one. What next, using Vladimir Zhirinovsky's/ Russia's 'Liberal' Party as the case study in liberalism, or RSA's Conservative Party as the study in conservatism? Anyone with a skerrick, a smidge, an iota of actual knowledge not mired in deliberate ideological head-in-sand obtuseness knows that the first thing Hitler did once power was secure was liquidate the socialist arm of the NSDAP (SA/ SturmArbeitlung, Ernst Rohm et alia) in the Night of the Long Knives. Hitler hated socialists, much as with Stalin he was willing to tolerate them short term to achieve his goals but then, as with Stalin, he stuck the knife in as soon as he could. Board veterans know what is coming next: Famines perpetrated by Britain in India while pushing massive amounts of drugs to China, in the name of 'free trade'. I await with anticipation the long list of justifications for why They Just Don't Count (but inevitably things like holodomor do, because teh socilaism!!!!).

I have to admit, I find people who believe that the flaws of capitalism are all because of its imperfect implementation and that if it were perfectly implemented everything would be Great as amusing as people* who say that the flaws of communism (or any other -ism really) were all about its imperfect implementation, and that if it were perfectly implemented it would be Great. They're both circular/ sophist arguments- by those metrics any flaw has to be due to implementation, rather than being an inherent problem. The only effect is the rhetorical one that it makes the concept itself impossible to criticise (theoretically, if accepted) since any criticism is aimed at the imperfections and not the perfect concept. But it is pointless outside of rhetoric, because you can do the exact same thing for any concept, as above. *put oby on temporary hiatus and bring back Lord of Flies, just for this thread and as an illustration.

... If that's really an IMF letter I'd suggest they go back to school to learn how to write proper formal correspondence. Plus it has the most pointless redactions ever, I spent literally no time wondering who Ms X Lagarde head of the IMF and Mr Arseniy Y_k 'PM' of Ukraine were. And I see that those fine democrats in Kiev, not content with disbanding rival political parties are now moving to have 'loyalty and corruption tests' for 'government employees' (oddly enough targeting anyone suspected of being sympathetic to the Communists or PoR; sure it's a coincidence that their kleptocrats like Tymoshenko are exempt), passed after the guy who disbanded the opposition party by fiat, ex putsch 'President' Turchenov, said he wouldn't allow members to leave the Rada without it being passed. So nice to see democracy in action, purges, disbanding parties- for being 'too small'; the Communists got more votes than Svoboda so go figure- lock ins, and the complete lack of triumphalism and total focus on reconciliation. Oh, and for some odd reason the beeb et alia keep reporting that the east has been offered autonomy or devolution or something without mentioning it's for three years, rather than being permanent. Must have got some of those Polish weapons though, they're talking up the military response again, just like after the last ceasefire. 'Democratic and western orientated', roflcopters.

And a Dx12 exclusive; with integrated Skype support. Make it require kinect too, that way you get forced OS and hardware upgrade paths.

Please don't bring this up any more, it's deeply embarrassing to be associated with the type of people who think EA with their day 1 DLC and Origin is worse than the sort of crap BoA and the other perennial contenders pulled and continue to pull. Makes gamers look like a bunch of entitled massively out of perspective zealots, and is just plain cringe inducing. oh, and don't argue with Volo, there's no pastime less constructive.

I'd find it pretty funny if Scotland voted yes, and pretty much all the English people I know would vote yes if they could vote which is pretty telling of how much the Scots are disliked. Not absolutely sure that Cameron doesn't want them to go either, him, Clegg and Milliband going to Scotland must be worth a few votes for the yes camp and it would make the tories winning the next election a lot more likely. Too bad you didn't stop the Croatian genocidal tendencies, but hey I guess you need to pick a side in every conflict. And Churchill's Bengal famine killed about an order of magnitude more people than the whole Yugoslav conflict, in a year, and well within living memory. (Yes yes Monte, chippy colonial. De pop your monocle and pour yourself a pink gin to get over the temerity of it all.)

Sure, but the fact of the matter is that there are (afaik) no unidentified traces on the shawl, and the only obtained sample matches a relative of a suspect. So unless there's something murky with the relative etc. We'll see. You have to follow scientific methodologies to be scientifically valid. It's not merely peer review, you should also get results confirmed independently, which clearly hasn't happened. Might be a question of putting 'yet' on the end of that sentence but there are more than a few ways to get bad results (entirely honestly) when doing things by yourself. The whole thing sounds decidedly shonky, especially since there is a book about to be published. If you've spent 14 years working on it you can arrange a second lab check within that time, no problem. Wouldn't be a shortage of labs willing to do it.

InternetAristocrat == Genghis Khan Adam Baldwin == Timur TotalBiscuit == Subotai 4chan == Mongolians Reddit == Tartars You == just another keshik, pillaging the civilised world and bringing an age of darkness to all that is right. Who will it be, throwing the plague infested body into Kaffa? Who will pile the skulls of SJWs outside their burning cities? You know you have committed such crimes, in your hearts.

It's simply not relevant information. It was a table of stats from a survey, providing refutation of "90% of people will tell you how much they sux". Not 90% of people in the future, not 90% of young people, not 90% of young educated people with a university degree, not 90% of people who agree with me; "90% of people". The distinctions you're trying to make are not relevant rebuttal. The demographic differences may be relevant to a/ other different argument(s)- eg that attitudes are changing- which is why they were provided by the survey team. But for current attitudes of the people overall, they are utterly irrelevant. To illustrate, there are only three alternatives interpretations possible and such demographic information is irrelevant in each. Either 'people' refers to a country, ie 90% of countries, or it refers to 90% of individuals in each country, or it refers to 90% of individuals irrespective of country. In all three interpretations the assertion is debunked wholly and solely by raw survey data, since specific demographic examination is not required to determine the relevant results so long as proper methodology is used. Now, you can try to massage the stats and slap caveats like "in the future" or "but educated people", but that is just a sop to protect (incorrect) preconceived notions, and has no rigour whatsoever beyond being a defence of what you want to be true.

In order for something to be theft you must deprive the original owner of it; "dishonest appropriation of another's property with intent to permanently deprive them of it" OED, Mirriam Webster "the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it ". If you duplicate something, even if it's unauthorised, then it cannot be theft since the original owner still has the original. Calling it theft is technically as incorrect as calling it rape, it's just a less emotive comparison. It's unauthorised distribution of copyright material, and probably some sort of computer crime (hacking) for the initial access. Arguably, in identity theft the owner is deprived of use of their identity due to having their credit rating trashed and the rest of the stuff that typically happens, so the usage there is a lot fairer and more arguable.

Yes, because excluding those over 65 and the less educated would be totally fair, only young educated people who agree with one's preconceived notions count. One just wishes one could find a way to exclude them from voting as well. Well, there is no reason to exclude them, and their views are as relevant as anyone else's are for whether 90% of people are glad ("Final (sic) word on that - ask people in post soviet block how they feel about them - 90% of people will tell you how much they sux,") that the USSR broke up. You haven't even picked holes- indeed, you can make a more valid* argument for excluding those negative voting young people as at least the older ones have something to compare against while the young ones don't. It's exactly what you did last time with stats, try to exclude everything that disagreed with you as irrelevant. And that's not how stats work, I'm afraid. *which is still invalid, it's just less arbitrary

You really need to chillout, man. If you're admitting that you can make a fairly extensive list of places that benefited from being in the USSR/ soviet bloc then your 90% claim is already cooked, and you're just agreeing that it is. Best not to over egg the pudding in the first place, certainly best not to keep cracking them.

If that really amuses you you should check out his back catalogue, there's plenty more there. I just wish he'd change up his shtick.

Yes, there's independent confirmation for two at least. OTOH, two of the initial 'suspects' appear not to have been involved at all, so it's a 50-50 strike rate either way. Okay I checked it and this is not true. Orogun's is a garbled version of an infographic of what happened at Night Games, which was run by one of ZQ's alleged romantic liasons. Not one of the more inherently convincing accusations, certainly.

People doing the comparisons to ISIS and saying that threatening to kill ten year olds are OK are doing so as satire and deliberate irony. Yes, it is known. I refuse to accept any alternative interpretations, for sake of my own sanity. Can't say I'm surprised Vavra is commenting, they clearly got metric asterisktons of SJW crap over the male protagonist/ predominant whiteys issues, in their medieval central European history based game of all things- and I wasn't even really following the game to see that much of it.

And if you listen to Ukraine and their buddies that is what they've done. As always you have- or state that you have- a basic misconception. Primarily, you mistake a statement or implication of capability with a statement of direct and imminent intent. When for example Putin says he can take Kiev in two weeks it doesn't mean that he intends to, or wants to, it means he is able to if he's pushed to. What he wants is a neutral Ukraine, if they try and change that- as to most practical purposes they did during the February putsch- then there will be consequences. If the agreement with Yanukovich had been honoured none of this would have happened.

Putin always said that flipping Ukraine was a red line, and unlike Obama he actually meant it. West thought he was bluffing, Turchenov, Yatsenyuk, Poroshenko et al thought so to, but he wasn't. There isn't anything that can change his mind, because to his mind it's an existential issue. And, once you accept that that is how he views it he's being perfectly rational- from his point of view.

At least theoretically most of the people writing those articles play or make games as a job. I'm not at all sympathetic with their position or philosophy on this matter, but I can certainly see games reviewers or producers not finding games to be 'fun' since they're involved with them all the time. I'm actually reminded of a quote from Friends, of all things, in reference to dating gynecologists: It's another problem that they don't have the self reflection to be able to see that their view may not be universal or even generally applicable, but, well, that isn't exactly a surprising revelation. A bit of introspection and this controversy would have been over long ago, or never happened.

The reason (supposedly) for deleted photos still being on the cloud is due to it being a back up. The theory being that if you accidentally deleted all your pics on your phone you could still retrieve them from the cloud back up. Which would make a kind of sense, since there's no objective 100% accurate way to determine whether a deletion is deliberate or accidental, even if it is counter intuitive in some ways. I have a lot of sympathy for those who have been hacked. If you're reasonably tech savvy you probably know that storing things on the cloud- or anywhere else connected to the internet, really- carries certain inherent dangers, but if you aren't tech savvy you probably just trust Apple or Sony or Steam or whoever's turn it is to be hacked this week to store your stuff securely, whether it be pictures or CC details. Easy to think that you should be at least encrypting your nudie pics (I was young, and needed the money?) if you want to store them online or even on a HD, but if you don't know that you don't know that.

I can perfectly believe that those paratroops accidentally entered Ukraine. They're still the only regular Russian troops captured that have been documented believably, and even the Ukrainians say that they didn't fire a shot before surrendering and had no back up. By the rebel accounts the Ukrainians have been surrendering for some time, it's mainly that they haven't been confirmed by the Ukrainian government hence haven't been reported. And that really is the problem, the rebels said that they were actually doing pretty well in the south but it was never reported, so the abrupt Ukrainian collapse there looks suspicious; if you go by the information provided by the rebels it looks a lot less so. Frankly, the whole southern front was extremely vulnerable, since it was a long, narrow, salient exposed to being cut in multiple places by counter attack, and with no safe supply line. It was a month ago that 400 odd crossed into Russia and surrendered due to being surrounded and out of ammo, well before the alleged large scale intervention, and even Ukraine admitted twice as many had been surrounded (while their situation map used by most media to show what is happening had them gaining ground in the area where that surrender happened, go figure). The big problem is that information coming from the Ukrainian government is not viewed as being from an interested party by the media in general, so it's impossible to get a balanced picture conventionally. So when their front does collapse people look for a reason that doesn't involve them being naive for believing an interested party, and the obvious reason is 'Russia did it'. Sheesh, the current iteration of the Ukrainian version of the sitmap still has Ukraine holding Ilovaesk, and there's genuinely independent confirmation (indeed, confirmation from the commander of the Ukrainian unit there) that it is far behind the current front and that the troops there have surrendered. But the BBC (and Al Jazeera, albeit with a proper disclaimer as to its source) still use the map supplied by Ukraine.

The widescreen mod works perfectly on retail IWD, that's the version I have and used earlier this year. Or maybe last year. Either way, it was an easier install than modding BG2 retail was. Which was still far better than wasting $20 on Overhaul's version. I did install Tales of the Luremaster as well as HoW, since that wasn't specified. Heuristics update, most likely. That's the 'predictive' part of the AV package that is designed not to catch known viruses but to catch unknown ones by behaviour or code snippets. If the heuristics have been updated too broadly all sorts of new 'threats' may be found in existing files, and they entirely deserve the ' ' around them. I've had gog installers, gamersgate installers and very well known mods flagged, Bioshock multiple times, all sorts of things, some after they've been on my computer for years and have been checked dozens of times previous. They were all false positives. If you've only had one of those you're lucky.

T72BMs were exported*. And manufactured prior to the break up of the USSR as well, so it is feasible for Ukraine to have inherited them, same as they inherited the rest of their T-72s. *As, uh, T-90 variants, which may be where the confusion comes from, to be charitable. If you'd like an independent cite here's one, if you'd like more info than you could ever use (and from nearly two decades per current crisis, for added independence) here's another.

Paradox tutorials are universally poor. My favourite was them thinking that having Adolf Hitler (!) 'narrate' the 'tutorial' for Hearts of Iron III was a good idea.

Story Mode? In Icewind Dale? ... Yes Corporal Hicks, it's the only way to be sure.