Zoraptor

I find the talk of Russia shooting itself in the foot over sanctions rather amusing, frankly. As someone from a country that has been continually shafted by EU and US agricultural subsidies artificially lowering prices I find it highly amusing to see people who have benefited from the CAP and ag subsidies- 40+% of the total EU budget in 2010- alternatively wailing at the unfairness and shouting that Russia will never be able to replace those imports. Europe doesn't even have a real world agricultural surplus, it's entirely artificial and based on German and French farmers', Spanish and Portugese fishermen etc etc predilection for parking their slow moving vehicles in annoying places every time significant reform is mooted. On this I am 100% with Victoria Nuland- EU? Asterisk the EU. That they were dumb enough and had enough hubris to think there wouldn't be blowback is just the hilarity cherry on the top of the amusement cake. Now, ban airlines from Russian airspace and watch the hohoho meter rise further. It's not like Russia doesn't have alternatives anyway. They didn't sanction us (just to add to the hilarity our PM says we cannot sanction them even if we wanted to without the UN, er, sanctioning it; which is of course rubbish but it's one time I do support his economic pragmatism wholeheartedly) nor any other countries except NATO/ EU and our trans tasman cousins in the 51st state. Plus Japan probably, but I can't even be bothered checking that since they don't have any sort of agricultural surplus even a constructed one, besides whale meat. They'll buy dairy and beef from here, fruit and beef from South America, fish from various places and everything will continue more or less as normal. Won't cost the US much either as they'll just maintain the deals which are profitable to them as they always do, so Boeing will keep supplying civilian aircraft even if Airbus stops. Overall, nice work , EU, now aim the shotgun at the other foot, I hear Putin is hiding behind that one now.

If we talk about military power - most powerfull armies in region is IDF, Iranian and Turkish military forces. ISIS holds no territory in any of those places, nor has it fought them (except some Iranian irregulars, maybe) so there's no way to compare. And of course ISIS refers to Iraq and al-Sham, which also includes none of those countries. I'll take the IS moniker seriously when they've shown they aren't a flash in the pan, then they can be compared to the greater regional powers. I've yet to see much evidence that ISIS aren't still essentially a light infantry force as well. They've captured some stuff and some supplies from Iraq and Syria, but I cannot imagine that they're stronger than, say, Saddam was in that regard, and the peshmerga held him off for a decade post GW1- and captured a lot of hardware as well, when Saddam went down. Having said that, I don't necessarily think that the peshmerga are poor, but I do think it's clear at this point that ISIS are very well lead- unfortunately, as I have no sympathy whatsoever for their goals or methods, but it gains nothing to deny it. A month ago there were a lot of people who were writing ISIS off as never having come up against a competent fighting force, like the peshmerga who would kick their arse when given the chance and would not have the morale and reliability problems the main Iraqi army so obviously had. Well, they did have problems, as it turned out.

It's questionable whether a property based system (or an employment based one) is not entirely immiscible with democracy though, let alone 'liberal' democracy. It's one of those situations where it's completely accurate to describe the system in the early US as a Representative Republic rather than a democracy, or the system in Britain as Parliamentary rather than democratic in the time of limited suffrage or Rotten Boroughs.

I'm not even clear what oby said that was even 'racist', unless something has gone bye bye. The retards referred to were ISIS, not kurds, and so far as I'm aware madcap muslim militiaman is not an ethnicity/ race. That certainly was the conventional wisdom, but the reason for the intervention now is that that has not proved to actually be the case. The whole reason for the Yazidis being on Mt Sinjar and ISIS having control of a major dam is because the peshmerga folded- maybe not as spectacularly as the main Iraqi army, but they lost badly enough that Irbil was within artillery range and they lost half a dozen decent sized towns/ cities within a few days. Both the Iraqi and Syrian armies have largely- but not in Syria's case entirely- stopped ISIS advancing further and in Syria's case they've even retaken quite significant areas. Plus, the Kurds had the somewhat odious approach of seizing Kirkuk where they did perform limited ethnically cleansing of minorities last time they held it (plus targeted abductions etc throughout the US occupation) under the guise of it being a historically Kurd city resettled by Saddam; and then announcing they'd declare independence. Which will be interesting, given the west's attitude to other independence movements, plus Turkey and the central Iraqi authorities' reaction. It's not that the Kurds have an easy job of course, they've got a massive front to defend, but the same is true- even more so- for the Iraqi and Syria armies. Truth is that ISIS is probably the best led armed force in the area, including peshmerga and the regular armies of both Syria and Iraq and has the advantage of choosing where to attack. They've gone from basically nothing to an area the size of a decent sized country in a few years, after all.

Yeah. Or just use the abbreviation, QED. Marvellous way to make yourself look smart. Or alternatively, a pretentious git. Basically just means "it's been proved" anyway, with a veneer of the science about it. When it comes to liberal democracy I can only quote Mohandas Ghandi on western civilisation: 'it would be a very good idea'.

I would add "general lack of imagination." One of the poins of space opera is that there are wild, exotic, and above all different planets and species to discover. Almost all of ME's locations looked frankly boring, and the visual style was entirely uniform across the whole galaxy. I can find a lot more variety in a five-minute walk around my neighborhood! I also thought most of the species--especially the council species--were not all that interesting. The cool and exotic ones--hanar, rachni--were on the sidelines. I liked what they did with the geth in ME2 and to a lesser extent in ME3 where they overdid the 'they're just misunderstood' pathos thing. I give them some allowance for the general imagination stuff, hardly any games are genuinely imaginative in that way. And on a practical level doing animations can be a huge amount of work if you cannot do mocap, so non human template stuff does have problems. The lack of variation in visual styles is a definite though, nothing quite like going to an exotic locale on another species' planet and it looking just about identical to all the other species' architecture.

There's still the option of getting a boxed copy of Pillars of Eternity through the website. At $50 plus shipping it's definitely no more expensive than DAI. Yeah, I know. It'd cost a lot more than DAI to get PoE that way though, since I'll get DAI via a British remailer with free mailing rather than the $20 for PoE shipping. If the twenty bucks went to Obsidian I'd do it, but it'd go to the courier or worse, Paradox. I'm not really that worried, I can usually scum downloads if I really need to, it's just mildly embarrassing to have to do so.

Wii base units sold at a profit though- it wasn't a loss leader unlike the other two. A low attach rate for PS360 would be an absolute disaster, but the Wii was in profit for every unit sold. From what I remember the profit attach point for a 360 was around 6 titles sold (why rrod was such a killer, for each rrod the attach rate required leapt to anything from 30 up to 60) and a little more for the PS3, but for the Wii it was effectively, hmm, -5, IIRC. So a PS360 had to sell 10 additional titles just to get to baseline Wii profitability. PS360 may have sold base units at a profit eventually, in the past couple of years, though again each had some hardware problems- Cell and HD-DVD drives are basically dead tech with infrastructure maintained solely to supply those consoles.

Probably DAI, since it will be readily available retail. Other two depend on whether I can hijack some kind person's internet for a substantial download, and much as with D: OS I'll have to wait for patching to die down as well. And any of them depends on whether I can get off my bum and actually buy myself a new computer, something I've been meaning to do since TWitcher2 was released and am yet to get around to.

PS3 did do far better than 360 in Europe and especially Japan, while 360 did better in English speaking countries. Both had issues- rrod for 360, Cell not doing anything and people buying them solely as BR players for Sony- so it was probably a draw overall. Really depends on the value added (game, peripherals etc) sales as well, since both consoles were sold at a lost for much of their life cycle.

You just did. Ken Levine at least is a very good writer of the video game class, but you do really have to compare like with like. He has played to his strengths from movie/ TV experience and writes straight linear stories, he doesn't have to weld multiple decisions into a coherent whole- and even with the linearity his story endings have tended to be somewhat underwhelming or off kilter, except maybe Thief. And derivative of one another too, of course. Bioware's only real problem with ME was the lack of a coherent plan, or not sticking to the plan. Plus, as I always say, ME2 did not do the set up job that was required and left far too much for ME3 to do, leading to the dei ex machina.

Snigger. Yeah, comparing Obama and McCain, two contemporary and contemporaneous politicians is totally like comparing two baseball players from different times. Or Emperor Palpatine. I do so hope you didn't decide to accuse someone else of... Oh. Ladies and Gentleman, I present: Irony. See, your problem is that I'm not saying what McCain or Romney- or any other Repub, you may note- would have done things differently and judged them on that, I'm judging them on what they said they'd do. What you are doing is called 'strawmanning', a specific sort of mischaracterisation where you change an opponent's argument to one you find easy to refute so that you can 'win'. To help out I've gone back and posted the full first sentence of what I wrote in the first relevant post. So I don't need a boring in character pre 100 level lecture on US power politics that I know all about already, and everything about how much power they'd have to do stuff is utterly irrelevant; I just need what they've said, and McCain in particular has said some utterly nutty things in an attempt to look decisive and strong. Would he actually invade Iran and bomb Syria and send troops into here there and the other place, who knows. Which is, of course, exactly the point, he can say what he wants to look decisive and strong precisely because he doesn't have to follow through, Obama cannot. Obama gets compared to what they say they would do, not what they would actually do. I'd wish that I'd said that in the first post, but I actually did say that.

Oh, I quite agree, but I do have sympathy for them thinking that it would be a killer app because it is the sort of thing that actually is potentially paradigm shifting, and not in the usual buzz word type way. It could have been the iPhone to Nintendo's Nokia/ Symbian instead of a fad, and may even be so in the long term. Knowing Microsoft that will be right after they've on sold the patents though.

Learn something every day, today I learned that you cannot compare one politician to another, that's equivalent to comparing them to fictional characters. I'll... give that approach all the consideration it deserves, shall we say. Sorry for giving bad advice too. Clearly an inflatable donut ain't going to cut it.

MS has haemorrhaged money on the Xbox from the get go. Even with the 360 they apparently did less well than simply leaving the cash in the bank due to the RROD issues, as when you're selling a loss leading console the worst thing possible is that it needs replacing since you didn't even make money on the first sale let alone the replacement/ refurb/ couriers etc. And the original xbox lost billions. Really though, MS is a perfect example of what happens when you live in a bubble and presume everyone wants what you want or what it's convenient for you to want, and where there's very little Criticism going on. I have a certain sympathy for them on some things- their original vision is exactly what the PC Gaming Master Race types think is awesome and is certainly profitable when (ex MS chap) Gabe Newell does it on PC, and kinect at least in theory should be a killer ap given how successful the original Wii was with its very limited kinematics. Given those examples they probably thought they were on a winner, shame for them that Sony was sensible enough to wait and then gazump them on every level from power to pricing to gamer friendliness. Then again I'm still butthurt about that ludicrous ribbon UI- and Metro of course, despite avoiding win8 so far.

Oh man, I really did suppurate your secondary fundamental, didn't I? Buy one of those inflatable donuts, I hear they help. To short circuit any further long winded silliness I'll also quote myself, just to make sure One of the factors making Obama look weak is that the alternatives are waving their arms and shouting about how they'd magically fix everything by just blowing up the right people; don't think Mr Cox is doing that to Mr Harding (shame his first name wasn't Red, then we'd have a near perfect description of his function in this argument) let alone in the ME, somehow. And, because they are doing so and their- candidate wise primarily McCain, Romney hasn't said much at all since 2012 though you can judge on what he said then and he too was a lot more interventionist than Obama, but there are plenty of other repubs with a word to say- pronouncements have no probability of being put into action we can make some judgement of the alternative while observing that direct comparison is unfair since their statements are empty of weight or real consequence beyond chest beating, unlike Obama's whose decisions have to actually be implemented. There's far more evidence behind McCain and the repubs in general being more overt and directly interventionist than Obama has been. And there's been plenty of 'what would Gore/ Kerry' have done stuff in GWB's time, a reasonable amount of 'what would GHWB/ Dole have done' in Slick Willy's time, a bit of 'what would Dukakis have done' in GHWB's time but a fair bit of (largely reverse) 'what would Carter/ Mondale' have done in Raygun's time- and beyond, for all those people who believe Raygun won the cold war single handedly. People judge people not just by the objective measure of history, as with Harding, Lincoln, Polk, Jackson etc, but also against the alternatives, and especially so when there has not been enough time to judge objectively via the lens of history- and even then you still get some 'but what if Lincoln had lost in 1860'/ 'what if Trotsky beat Stalin' scenarios. I don't like Obama much at all, he is fundamentally weak and vacillating, has consistently failed to deliver on promises while continuing destructive policies because they're too much work, he has little consideration for genuine liberty and failed to get much important stuff done even when the democrats had majorities in congress; but if it's his ME policy or McCain's (2008; the pre Rove shanking non crazy 2000 McCain, being another story) it's BHO every time, and twice on Sundays despite me not liking him.

Obama isn't someone I'd normally defend but his actions in the ME have been at least far more reasonable than the alternatives (McCain/ Romney; random Repub rep/sen) would have been if they had the power to do what they've said. Nothing like saying everything would be fine if they were just in charge and could magically bomb all evil doers with unmissable Righteousness Bombs for hypothetical scenarios. Pragmatically, and in hindsight, he probably should have left Gaddafi in power- there cannot be much appreciation in Washington for all those IS(IS) flags being waved in Benghazi let alone murder of diplomats. Bombing Syria when he said he would was already too late, taking the bail out may have made himself look a bit silly but may well have avoided making things even worse and that's a trade I wish more politicians would take. [This edit courtesy of my cat, who decided I was finished after 1.5 sentences and managed to click 'post' for me]

Because they had it labelled as an Su-25, even if it was an erroneous assignment? Until it does something an Su-25 cannot do that label would remain. Then anyone going back to look at it would see 'Su-25', even if it actually wasn't. The equivalent that I'd base that scenario on would be something like the Vincennes incident- if you looked at the radar playback I'd have no doubt that the Airbus there was labelled as an F14- erroneously, and you might notice the mistake that lead to that happening- but that is what you'd see. It's fairly obvious I'm deeply sceptical about scenarios involving an actual Su-25 though, I accept that it may be technically possible to have been one but I find it highly unlikely. I don't think that line of thought is significant. If they knew the specific missile via humint they wouldn't say to protect sources and to a large extent the specific hardware used is irrelevant for this scenario as any missile + cannon combo can take down an airliner; though obviously whether it was a SAM or air to air is critical overall. Mostly though, the Ukrainians claimed the previous day to have had an Su-25 shot down by Russian fighters, taken at face value they'd have strong cause to be armed with AAMs andor have Su-27s around. And if the plan was to stage a false flag or go after Putin then it's the ground ordnance that would be wholly unnecessary to the mission, not any air to air stuff. They may all resolve to one source, and though there are multiple sources for Su-27s being used in the relevant areas, and as per above, it would be an expected response to have fighters such as Su27s or MiG29s around if Russian fighters had really shot down a Ukrainian plane I'll concede there may well not be multiple sources for them being around on that specific day. But in any case, this could probably be cleared up one way or the other if the CVR and air controller data were released. Don't really know enough to comment, except that I took the first six aircraft to be the initial deployment only, and not necessarily the number present/ available now as tensions ramped up. So the two mentions of six aircraft may not be the same six aircraft- 6 out of the full Su27 complement on patrol would be perfectly doable.

Incorrectly though. Of course. Al Baghdadi was a big pal of a certain Abu Musab Al Zaqawi, laterly of Al Qaeda in Iraq, and succeeded him as lead in that organisation. ISIS is Al Qaeda in Iraq, rebranded, and as such predates the Syrian Civil War by years. Indeed their extreme measures are almost identical from 2006 to now, including softie liberals like Ayman al-Zawahiri thinking they are bit too extreme. Thank goodness for Russia and China and their principled and reasoned stand, else Al Baghdadi would be ruling from Mosul and Damascus instead of Mosul and Raqqah, and would be halfway towards living up to ISIS's name. Shame it took that clusterasterisk in Libya for them to learn the costs of ill thought out western meddling and how they'd ignore everything about UN resolutions except the parts they like, but for some reason they trusted western good intentions. Poor naive Russia and China, falling for the equivalent of a Nigerian Money Scam, but at least they learnt from their mistakes.

Isn't everyone unsure of designations done purely via radar though*? Assuming they actually have video in real time from the Rostov radar station then I'd presume they would have labelled it as an Su-25 because they'd expect it to be one on a ground attack mission rather than a Su-27 or MiG-29. And there are alternative sources saying Su-27s were around. So far as I am aware while transponders give out that an aircraft is military they do not share their type, that has to be assigned. Otherwise I'd find it difficult to credit that the Russians would pick exactly the wrong type of plane to finger when they could as easily have said Su-27 or MiG-29, it's not like they aren't familiar with the aircraft's specifications. *Would have thought it would be easy to find out, but I obviously can't find the right terms to search for.

Of those, perhaps Morocco. Maybe UAE and Jordan too. Maybe. I know you love some Saud, but they don't love anyone who ain't Wahhabi (or Salafi, if you want to be in their good books) and love exporting that ideology to places that, surprise surprise, then get surprisingly well armed loony tunes Salafi extremists popping up. They also oppress their shia minority pretty badly, and even if you don't count their proxy groups they have directly attacked shia in other countries with their army/ air force- in Bahrain and Yemen. Qatar has few internal problems but is hardly tolerant, they also back the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, as well as extremists in Syria. Bahrain only has the Khalifas in power still because Saudi sent in x000 soldiers to crush the majority Shia. Jordan has problems with refugees of both the Syrian and Palestinian variety, albeit not sectarian ones, and the Hashemites are perennially weak and wobbly. Algeria, FIS, nuff zed; also AlQ Salafi nutbar Sahel branch is active there, eg the oil refinery seizure fairly recently. Morocco has had some problems too, but nowhere near as bad, and UAE supports much the same religious nutbars as the Saudis do, though they're at least theoretically more pluralist as they want foreign tourists. Really though, if you want almost totally stable muslim countries with passably pluralist policies you want... Oman, as per virumor. Maybe Morocco and Brunei as well, depending on how you weight the factors. And that is about it, sadly.

I don't think they're above doing it on moral grounds. It's the practical and political grounds I question. Too hard to keep quiet and way, way too much risk of blowback. While it's certainly not impossible, having Yatsenyuk or Poroshenko or similar sit and plan to actively shoot down an airliner and blame it on the Russians I simply don't find very credible at all, without significant evidence. They have as much right to be presumed innocent on this as anyone else has. It's one thing to get extremists to go off and fight and kill and die for you because you can guarantee they'll be committed to doing the job it's quite another to commit a deliberate act of war on the people you're relying on to bail you out of your mess, or on the neighbour you really want not to get involved if it was thought to be Putin's plane. If it were done deliberately I can only see it as having been done by a few people acting effectively independently- or as having been accidental, though obviously the current scenario under discussion cannot be accidental. As such, the scenario is most plausible with the perpetrators acting independently of political control, with a cover up afterwards. And even that isn't all that plausible at this point in time and with the evidence available, it's just most plausible.

I'm no expert, but I have been told that such things are actually very difficult to fake convincingly, because the blast decompression/ percussive damage which is evident on the wreckage has to happen after the shot damage, if it's really been shot, so you get scoring, fire damage, dents and the like occurring over the bullet holes. If it's faked, then that type of damage is almost impossible to fake convincingly. Certainly, obtaining a 30 mm cannon and firing a few shots would not do the job. Other sources do have Su-27s being around, and escorting other airliners. There's too little information to know, it's possible the Russians thought it was an Su-25 on a ground attack mission so assigned it as that when it was something else, or that it was an Su-25. If it were there at all. If it were an Su-25 it would certainly support it being a rogue operation, you wouldn't use one if you had a choice given the alternatives available. Can't say that I'm particularly convinced either way. The Russian version actually has rather more direct, concrete, evidence for it (amazingly) than the Ukrainian one as they have released actual pictures of Buks in situ in a relevant area and under Ukrainian control but that's obviously from a partisan source. The only 'impartial' evidence is on those roosterpit segments, and requires a somewhat convoluted sequence of plane shot by Buk, then finished off by an Su-25. It would explain some of the Ukrainian's behaviour and some of the odd omissions in evidence provided (no US spy pictures, no air controller voice, no CVR audio release) and why the Ukrainians are so keen to capture the wreckage that they're actively shelling it. But it ain't really convincing overall. OTOH the alternative relies on Ukrainian provided phone taps and social media postings when it might reasonably be expected that a 'smoking gun' could and would be provided via US intelligence assets, if it existed. The lack of any satellite imagery in support is telling. So neither is convincing.

It probably wouldn't have been an Su-25, it is relatively slow, and has a significantly lower service ceiling than any large commercial airliner. But Ukraine does have both Su-27 and MiG-29 which have a 30mm cannon, more than appropriate service ceiling and far greater speed. And you'd send them after a plane before a Su-25, which is more ground attack. It'd be completely bonkers anyway, as it would either mean a false flag op or an attempt to hit Putin, and either would be crazy. Though the alternative doesn't exactly make a lot of sense either.

Oh come now, hasn't Mario proven enough times that he can obliterate solid brick with his bare hands (he uses his fist, not his head as is falsely believed my most)? I would have figured he would have broken his hand many times over by now, so he's either hopped up on PCP, or he's got some kind of armored hand, maybe adamantium, like Wolverine, minus the claws. A wall should work- he's a major video game character so he will be dealt with in the traditional way of such things, via an inescapable, unavoidable cutscene. And as everyone knows, video game characters mysteriously lose all their pre developed powers when a story critical cutscene comes along. Main problem is that video game deaths tend not to be permanent, so extra vigilance may be required.