Zoraptor

That list is... problematic. I'm probably as far from a European Integrationist as you are, but I think it has to be admitted that the problems with Europe's responses to the various crises- which there undoubtedly have been- do have two possible generalised solutions- and are largely the result of the current set up being a kludgey compromise that satisfies no one. One solution is to, basically, decentralise the EU and go back to the E(E)C days and fully independent (of big E Europe) economic and foreign policies, but the other is to go further along the integrationist route. Rostere is, for example, most certainly correct that a lot of the problems with the Euro as a currency is that it lacks the... fiscal unity, for want of a better term, that most sovereign currencies have; fair rules which are consistently applied across a fully integrated financial system with no tendency to turn a blind eye to infractions because it is effectively impossible for the constituent regions to commit such infractions. As it stands it's a kludge, a compromise. Moving away from the kludging and compromising to full federalisation would 'fix' the Eurozone, as much as any currency can be 'fixed'. Reversion to individual currencies would also 'fix' it, as much as any currency can be 'fixed'. The Euro as it stands is broken, you can either go forward or go back, and each approach has its own problems. Same is true for most of the European Project, to greater or lesser extents. But both the go forward and go back approaches are hand waving at this point- while I personally think the EU is better as primarily a free trade/ customs union type set up saying that would fix the problems in your list is hand waving every bit as much as saying that further integration would fix them- the sovereign states of Europe were perfectly capable (and regularly did) stuff up foreign relations, energy security and economic reform by themselves. And while individual responsibility for individual mistakes is in general a fine principle sometimes those stuff ups lead to truly catastrophic consequences. Really though, at least in theory a fully Unified European voice on such issues should improve all three points on the list, as the problem with all three is that the EU does not really have a unified voice or policy on any of them.

... But why replace it at all? Why not build both? You haven't come up with a single logical reason why both should not be built, you just, heh, deflect by, hmm, strawmanning it into being a one-or-the-other argument when it clearly isn't. White stream and south stream are/ were projects under concurrent development, after all. That's what you need to explain. And I'm afraid "oh no teh Russians!!!" does not in any way constitute a logical argument.

El Oh El indeed. Yeah, so I underestimated the value of the deal to Russia by a factor of 2 in a throwaway line on a subject I had no intent to discuss further, big deal since the net result was that the deal was larger than I stated. Indeed, the preponderance of expert opinion is that the deal is pretty fair overall, and in the absence of compelling evidence otherwise that is what I will go with. I regard this as fundamentally peripheral issue to the primary subject anyway, so I'm not going to nitpick. Well, not much. Though I certainly can. If you're going to say that Europe's market is, to quote "500+ bcm/ annum" and then use as your example something which is, to quote "18.1 bcm/ annum" and whose costings do not include any of the field development you were saying was important ("most of those costs are for developing Russian gas fields", to quote) in the costings a post or so ago I most certainly don't think you've scored a home run with your analysis.

Oh please. You decided to arbitrarily apply infrastructure costs against only one side, of one deal, to show how poor it was, for that one side, which just happens to be the side you've consistently argued against*. You've got about as much room as I have to throw the 'apologist' tag around unironically. If you're going to do comparisons and you want to do it properly then you have to do it consistently for all sides and all deals to generate that fair comparison, otherwise it's not actually a comparison, it's manipulation to get a desired result. So, not only do you have to apply Chinese infrastructure costs against the price they are paying to get their 'real' cost, you have to apply the initial costs of all their European destination supply infrastructure and gas fields against Russian costings/ the European supply rate as well- after all, the fields and pipelines supplying Europe weren't created decades ago by the natural gas pixies in a fit of philanthropic fervour, they too had to be paid for; and the 'real' cost of gas supplied to Europe or China to Europe or China includes their gas infrastructure every bit as much as Russia's infrastructure is a cost to Russia. Arguing that infrastructure costs must be applied only to the Russians, and only in this single deal, is a comparison designed whether consciously or not to make this deal look worse than it is. There's no need for a doctorate in economics to know that's the case- basic common sense and logic is sufficient. I note that you have no response to the price comparison to Ukraine, or it being a bulk deal, so I guess they are accepted as being valid rebuttal at least. *Right down to arguing that the Ukrainian Constitution didn't really say what it says when you were arguing that Yanukovich's removal was constitutional.

Well now, this has got interesting in the last three minutes. Still find Sturridge's (vague) resemblance to MC Hammer disconcerting.

Yeah, but that's not how democracy works, at least in theory. By that measure someone voting Labour in a safe Tory seat or vice versa just shouldn't bother to vote since there's no chance their vote will change anything. People in 'liberal democracies' simply are not (generally) conditioned to think that way even if a lot of the time it reflects reality; it is though quite likely why there is declining participation and voting rates. Voting for UKIP- and I'll caveat this as not being resident in the UK nor having ever voted for them- certainly appears to be near pure protest vote, and protest votes are not really expected to do anything other than show dissatisfaction with the status quo. And it's a protest vote from a bloc that will only get more strident if they feel they are being ignored, which they undoubtedly will, and in a political climate in which dissatisfaction with the status quo, whether justified or not, is high and growing that will get them more votes. UKIP aren't really expected to achieve change at this point, indeed, once they do achieve change their entire reason for being becomes redundant. And they will spin any lack of action into being the fault of 'EU bureaucracy running mad and stifling British Liberty under their smothering continental regulatory blanket etc etc' rather than them themselves, so powerlessness actually enhances their standing rather than weakens it.

10% discount on a bulk long term deal would not be considered unusual at all if it were anything other than gas (and Russia) involved, and that is the figure pretty much everyone is using. And it's far less than other discounts. The old Ukrainian figure that Tymoshenko/ Yanukovich negotiated was considerably lower than that or even the lowest estimate you've provided ($234 total cost or around 35% baseline discount), for example. Doing anything with the infrastructure costs is questionable as well. We don't know who is paying them or how much they will be. Plus, if the 'real' cost that Russia is getting gets lowered by their infrastructure costs then, logically, what China 'really' pays has to have their infrastructure costs added. So, a new natural gas distribution network across China, hmm, make it easy and say 50 billion dollars and the 'real' price is... back up to ~$350, again. Sadly that is not accurate, the government is actively recruiting neo fascists volunteers for direct use as shock troops- see Al Jazeera going to visit the Azov Battalion. It isn't widely reported in western media, for some unfathomable reason, but it definitively is happening. This is the unit that is being widely and absolutely deliberately used in eastern Ukraine, and could not be better designed to reinforce exactly the 'Kievan junta/ Banderan/ Fascist' stereotype that Kiev supposedly wants to avoid.

I doubt it will collapse. The Kurds are still at the sidelines, but they could quickly halt Isis if they wanted to. And there's also Iran who wouldn't like to see their new bestest Shiite buddies toppled. Yeah, if Iran props up Assad there's no chance of them not propping up Iraq as well. Realistically there's no chance of majority shia areas getting taken and held, there's still far too many weapons in general circulation and many in the general population have military experience through the old Iraqi army or the previous rounds of sectarian troubles, it's no coincidence that the areas taken are all predominantly sunni so less likely to have general popular resistance.

It's probably indifferent in a game- while there would be far more than anyone could feasibly visit that should not in itself effect quality, assuming the worlds are generated efficiently so don't slow development. There's no obligation to visit all/ most/ many systems, most likely. Heh, they'll probably do realistic dynamic star fields based on the systems, knowing Braben. His physics autism could be highly annoying in FFE when you went to a binary star and the planet you wanted was on the other side of the system, took forever to get there without hyperspace.

Nope, you have absolutely no logical basis to claim that stopping the south stream improves energy security, none at all. At present if there was a pure accident on the trans Ukraine pipeline that cut supply then, well, supply would be cut, with no malicious or other intent. With south stream it wouldn't. Having an alternative source for Russian gas improves energy security, full stop, there is literally no reason not to have it and it cannot be argued that not having it improves energy security. You can have other sources as well, that is sensible, but that doesn't change the basic facts for all the anti-russian butthurt the EU may be feeling. As for China, there was the little matter of the 200 billion dollar gas agreement Russia and China signed this year, which you might have heard about if you weren't as one eared as you are one eyed. At this point it doesn't matter whether or not Russia and China particularly like each other on a fundamental basis, they have complementary economies and both certainly and fundamentally dislike western hegemony.

I would have thought they would have at least got the type of tank right, only footage I saw of them was fuzzy cam of a single tank trundling down a suburban road. Kind of funny, Al Jazeera who have usually been pretty accurate were still saying they were Russian T72s a couple of hours ago. Situation with funding and the like I suspect would actually be rather like that of ISIS in Iraq- in that case most of the money and supplies comes from 'private sources' in the UAE/ Saudi/ Qatar (or is looted) and none comes from any sort of 'official' source. Far better plausible deniability that way, main drawback is that you have less control and they may decide to go off the reservation.

Well, that is exactly how the separatists got their bmps, from the side of the road. In that case it was all filmed by the BBC and Al Jazeera. Seems rather odd and completely pointless that the Russians would give enough military hardware for it be remarked upon but nowhere near enough to actually make a difference, whereas Ukrainian armed forces had heaps of stuff boxed up in warehouses- something like a quarter of their nominal air force was boxed in Crimean warehouses for example- because they lack the funds to actually run it. Given that the Ukrainian Interior Ministry is utterly unreliable when it comes to facts there's no reason whatsoever to believe them over a more logical explanation which has happened before. If you start seeing lots of tanks and the more advanced varieties then its likely they're getting tanks from the Russians. 3 T72s though, which Ukraine itself has hundreds of? Nah.

It's more likely it is the sort of 'soft bias' you frequently get in many sports when it looks like a favoured, home team may lose and then every decision seems to go in their favour, that happens a lot and is probably subconscious rather than deliberate. Croatia winning would have been massively deflating (for Brazil that is, I imagine most neutrals were cheering the red and whites) for a tournament that is and has been... not without controversy, domestically. But outright corruption can hardly be ruled out given the state of football and the festering canker at its top. I still remember the horrible clusterasterisk of the 2006 venue award where our delegate ignored instructions and gave Germany rather than RSA the cup that time- and how basically nothing changed except a quickly abandoned host rotation policy- let alone the still unwinding mess of the Qatar bid's success for 2022 and the Blatter patronage system kicking in for yet another term. It's actually kind of ironic that the Russian bid for 2018 has seemingly missed out on the controversy so far given all the Sochi stuff was only a few months ago and it really says something about how crap the rest of the stuff has been.

I only skimmed the match but every time I did it seemed some Croat was getting booked for something that looked pretty innocuous. Ah yes, time for my quadrennial view of perhaps the only tournament x team y song I can actually stomach.

Meh, everyone uses white phosphorus- in the past decade or so Russia, the US ("shake 'n' bake"), Israel at the least- it's just that everyone says it's legitimate use and they were really trying just to make smoke rather than set people/ built up areas on fire, that happened 'accidentally'. Several hundred times. Indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas is a war crime anyway, nobody except the most naive will expect any action against Ukraine for it- such things are only actionable when we don't like the people doing it, not because of any actual moral issue. What a crock. Russia has never threatened to cut Europe off from gas, that is entirely against its own interests and only happened last time Ukraine refused to pay and was siphoning gas, something no one in Europe itself argued was not happening, they just argued that Russia should put up with it. Diversification means having multiple alternative supply means- including multiple means from the same source- stopping this will certainly not improve Europe's energy security. There is no sensible way to argue that it will as it's an obvious logical fallacy that majority supply along a single (well, the alternative(s) cannot supply full capacity) route is more secure than supply along multiple routes with redundant capacity. Arguing that is literally non sensical. This is entirely about keeping Ukraine important so that Russia can't leverage gas against it without also leveraging against Europe, something it does not want to do. What, based on the Ukrainian interior ministry? They couldn't lie straight in bed. They've repeatedly and provenly lied- Russians and Transnitstrians killed in Odessa (actually none) etc etc. We know how the separatists got most of their gear and their bmps, indeed we saw them get their bmps on live TV, and there's plenty of TV footage of them raiding army bases for gear as well. Might as well say that all the footage of ISIS chappies in Iraq driving around in Humvees means that the US has been supplying Al Qaeda with weaponry, there's as much proof.

You're more than entitled to like the combat in DAO, I do myself in general and though there was certainly room for improvement that is true of just about every combat system. But, the problem is that there is simply too much of it for many people and while it is certainly not all copy and paste groupings hand placing is irrelevant if the end result is the same basic encounter. And there is, generally, an encounter every 50 game metres despite the game levels being pretty large. If you have 20 (?) encounters per level in the Derp Roads they are going to become repetitive unless you really like the combat. Ultimately, once you have worked out tactics against a mob of hurlocks/ genlocks or whatever then those tactics work against 95% of the groups you will encounter and it becomes a matter of hitting the relevant spells/ abilities as they recharge. It is not just autopilot combat but it is mainly a matter of making sure the AI doesn't do anything too stupid and hitting group heal or whatever at relevant times. Don't think I ever played on normal difficulty. Still, I'd far rather have DAO's encounter design philosophy than the majority of encounter design in Baldur's Gate.

The good thing about physics is that once you have the rules set up you don't actually need much information to accurately describe derived systems. You could describe the Sol system quite easily and with reasonable fidelity in less than 1kb of data, excluding earth- and (presumably) most systems will not have intelligent life in Elite if it's anything like E2/ FFE, which had pretty detailed large scale physically accurate planetary systems on a 1.44MB floppy. Again presumably they will use an equivalent to the original's procedural generation for most of those systems rather than designing them by hand though, hand design would be asking slightly too much.

I generally agree that Triss makes more sense as a love interest from a story point of view, and is essential for the story written for TW2. But, that doesn't change Shani being offered as an alternative in TW1 and then that choice being disregarded in the TW1-2 transition, if they see Letho as being similarly essential (doubtful, but possible) they may decide to ignore the decision there as well, or retcon it. Maybe the Viper School has a 'feign death' ability like Leliana has in Dragon Age...

On the other hand, even if you chose Shani in TW1 you still got Triss at the beginning of TW2. Which treatment Letho gets probably depends a lot on what his role is in the story and how peripheral or essential it is.

You can have impulsive anti authority reactionaries. You don't usually, because the status quo is pretty much by definition conservative so those who want to restore it (ie classic reactionaries) may well be impulsive but are usually not anti authority- but they don't have to be. Unless you're playing Victoria2 or something If you want a real world group which is arguably reactionary, impulsive and anti authority then you can look at the Tea Party in the US, they want to restore a status quo that they see as being fundamentally anti authority. Well, at least in theory.

Putin's isolation is complete. I find this somewhat funny and yet another example of western propaganda saying different things at different times- there are howls of indignation about people laying hands on old Lizzie when it's the Lizard of Aus but now people are all 'look at those nice Kenyan and Maori chaps helping an OAP while Putin does nothing'. Touching the queen is a major faux pas, so Vladimir Vladimirovich is merely showing impeccable manners while those buffoons Sir Jerry Matepare (really, as Gov Gen he should know better. Plus you'd expect some of Putin's refinement and politeness to have rubbed off on him as he sat next to Vladimir Vladimirovich at dinner) and Obama blatantly ignore royal etiquette like a right pair of uncultured yobbos. No wonder Putin is holding himself aloof from such shenanigans, indeed he allows himself only a mild look of disdain at the whole deal. And that really is... ironic. EU says it wants energy supply security then deliberately sabotages a project that would give them that. It is, of course, far more about preserving Ukraine's ability to hold gas supplies to Europe to ransom so maintaining that bargaining chip against Russia than anything else, as the EU knows that Russia would happily cut Ukraine off for its bill payment failures- but cannot, if it would take out Europe's supply as well.

Yeah, everything about DAO was just a bit too long. DAI will certainly have failings but I'd be very surprised if 'too short' were one of them. Jade Empire was probably Bioware's shortest game- took me a bit over a dozen hours so probably a sixth of DAO- yet I found it too long and thought the end sections dragged horribly. Far more important is whether you like what is being supplied, DAO was ~six times the length of JE, so while I did find that parts of DAO dragged it was after a lot more time than JE and I liked DAO a lot more overall.

I might reply to the first part, but I have not the slightest clue what point you're trying to make. Your comment is completely unrelated to what (the multiply ellipted) quote says. As for the second part, I have many weird and wonderful powers, what I do not have is the ability to get Walsingham to raise subjects based on mind control. He raised Iraq, I just gave the reasons why Syria or Ukraine doesn't get many protesters in the UK. If I were to raise a 'comparative' it would have been- and indeed was- Kosovo, in any case.

Yeah bro, it's all a plot by the well known commie Russian rag the Washington Pravda to protect their masters in the Kremlin and discredit brave truth sayers. Yeah, nah. It's just them saying the response is actually fairly typical, and that the US does the same thing anyway. Unsurprising that those two points get a negative response from you, but at least you're consistent. They were anti Bush for a reason, not just because they hate those pesky US presidents with four letters in their name. And the primary reason was that, well, he wanted to invade Iraq. Simply saying they were anti Bush in the same way some people are... anti fluoride or anti vaccination is a pretty big distortion, they were against him because of what he was doing, not just randomly. And the point is not that the British government can not promote peace by anything other than leaving stuff alone, it's that people tend to protest for stuff that effects them directly and stuff they feel they can actually change. Neither Syria nor Ukraine directly effects most people in the UK, and there's no realistic way that protesters in the UK can effect either situation either.

Pretty sure we got an (unofficial) confirmation here that that was exactly the reason for 3 Bioware teams.