Zoraptor

No PC version announced, therefore minimal PC coverage is probably why nobody has heard of it. Plus it's still a fair way off. I'm not actually sure now if that rumoured amount is more or less than some of the more outlandish claims about how much TOR or ESO cost.

There is no 'solution for dealing with Boko Haram'. Magic bullet solutions to complex problems are just that, magic. They don't exist. Sure, if I could wave my hands and remove Nigeria's corruption it would go some way to ameliorating things, if I could wave my hands and replace all their weapons with guava and mangoes that would help and if I could teleport any hostages home I would. But I can't do any of that, you can't either, and neither can the US/ France/ Britain or anyone else.

Shrug. I've got no particular fandom for Russian competence or incompetence, though I think Putin has played a weak hand well overall- but the west could only get their guys into power by 'cheating', and being antidemocratic, Putin's man was duly and fairly elected four years ago and pro Russians won the rada elections as well. Can't say the same of Turchenov and Yatsenyuk, who owe their positions entirely to, well, "uprising" and "revolution" per Tyanybok, rather than democratic process. You can't judge competence based on people breaking rules, else the most competent football team in the world would be the one that brought AKs to the game and shot the opposition team and referees during their 2134-0 victory and the most competent politician in the world is King Jong Un, with his 100% approval in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. But I'll concede the point, yes, the west is far more competent than Russia at getting their way undemocratically, and Putin/ Russia was naive thinking they'd honour results their own monitoring organ described as fair, rather than plot to overturn them. Their charming naivete and willingness to believe the best in the west despite the repeated betrayals is, most certainly, one of Russia's most endearing attributes.

I suspect Outcast will go back to kickstarter down the line, with a rather better pitch from the get go. There's a lot more they could or should have done- get an agreement with GOG to offer the original at a discount of free for a while, for example, and some of their stretch goals were a bit off from what most would expect from KS (eg fund our console version!) as they were more of direct benefit to them than to backers. (I don't actually have a problem with the console stretch goal personally since Outcast would be perfectly portable to a controller without losing PC functionality, but stretch goals should really be about encouraging backers to give more, not about doing things the dev wants to do. Plus, there was some ill feeling about the cancelled Outcast 2 being console only)

The guy is basically a blogger, much as Erik Kain is on the gaming side (though Kain is far, far better). He doesn't have any inherent authority gained from being associated with Forbes and it similar to citing Alex Jones or similar non ironically. His source is a garbled Ukrainian news report, which misrepresents a post poll survey as being the poll itself. Not exactly a new thing, there's a great sideline in the media about quoting opinion polls to show support for Ukrainian unity which all conveniently ignore that supporting separation is actually criminal. You have to be brave or stupid to tell some random voice over the phone- who knows your name, address and phone number- that you're committing thought crime. Which is why surveys on any illegal activity have to be done very carefully and not as a part of some random opinion poll. And in shocking news, Eurovision will count votes from Crimea as being from Ukraine. The irony? You can't vote for your own country, but Crimeans will be able to vote for Russia.

And in that case the Tigers lost largely because they weren't an insurgent force any more. When they were an insurgent army they were extremely successful, perhaps too successful since that success led to them formalising all their structures and basically setting up a mini Tamil statelet complete with all the trimmings and a regular army during the truce- an army which then got steamrollered when the conflict resumed because, as a regular army, it was no match for the Lankan one.

Ah, but your dialogue is also different, and that is where most of the hints and in jokes come in.

Meh, the problem with the balkans stuff is that it's never even handed in its coverage. Pretty much everyone there was highly unpleasant at various times and places and there were no good guys, that's always true in any civil war- "what's so civil about war anyway?" to quote the great philosopher Axl Rose. But media loves a nice, simple story with identifiable good guys and bad guys and will, as always, hammer the square situation into the round hole when establishing that narrative. The usual response to something like the ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Krajina varies from "they voluntarily moved out" (!!!) to "well, they did it first" (which rather ignores the conduct of Croatia during WW2- which is actually quite a nice parallel to Ukraine, to bring things back somewhat to topic, since you have at least some in Croatia lionising the Ustasi much as you have some in Ukraine who think Bandera and the UPA were wonderful) to simply pretending it didn't happen, when the only proper response is to deplore such things whoever is the perpetrator and not let geopolitical stuff trump ethics. And that, ladies and gentlemen, puts me well over my RDI of naivity for the day, and it's still before lunchtime. Oh, and the chopper the Ukrainians lost in Slovyansk is confrimed to have been shot down by small arms fire- so much for them having to have sophisticated missiles supplied by Russia to shoot down helis as claimed last week. I'd be keeping count of how often the pro Kiev propaganda has been wrong, but I ran out of fingers and toes some time ago. Pretty sure. You don't see western politicians talking about revolution and uprising in that manner and he was stating quite plainly that it was planned, we have no reason to doubt him. Now, you can say that an interview with the third most important opposition leader doesn't constitute evidence and you need to hear the same from Yatsenyuk and Klitschko, or that he really meant have a bake sale and do some door knocking instead of "revolution" and "uprising", but I'd be far more confident that that interpretation is your bias than mine is mine, because instead of bake sales and door knocking we got, well, the uprising and revolution which my interpretation supports. Your interpretation has its flush busted by the 2 of reality, mine is the ace of trumps (suit, reality), since I'm into mixing metaphors. If we hadn't got revolution and uprising it'd be open to interpretation, certainly, but less than a year after that interview that is precisely what we did get. Planned for, played for, and got. Quod Erat decidedly non passively Demonstrandum.

Hey guys, I hear that the cab driver is proven undeniably to be Cain! (Don't play either Malkavian or Nosferatu on the first play through, unless you're sure you'll play once in which case Malkavian is OK. Apart from arguing with TV anchors and Stop signs the Malkav quite obviously knows what is going on, and is more entertaining if you know what is going on as well)

Those sheep need a good crutching, not something the average consumer would put up with. Unless rebranded as a ewe brazilian, perhaps. Plus one of the lambs looks like it has fly strike. Yes, I am awaiting Sheep Shearing Simulator 2014, now that you ask.

What I think is utterly irrelevant and completely meaningless (though I'll give it below since you seem so interested)- it's pretty obvious to anyone what Tyanybok meant and he's far more important than I am, because whatever I say will be speculation whereas what he says speaks directly as an actual leader. It's like disputing something about black holes, having an interview with Hawking given as a reply then insisting you want to know what I think about black holes, not Hawking, and it's only one interview so Hawking was misquoted or the interviewer had an agenda. You can insist that when Hawking says singularity he means something different and when Tyanybok says uprising or revolution he means something different- even despite actually getting an uprising and revolution- but in neither case does the evidence support you. Now since you're so interested I have basically no doubt that they decided they were going to try and flip Yanukovich if they got the opportunity, from the start, it's a tactic they've used previously and successfully and Tyanybok outright states that they've been looking for an issue to trigger something, and I have no doubt that they were actively encouraged to do so by the EU and US as that is a tactic they've used successfully in their various colour revolutions, hence the EU's intransigence about agreements when the Russians were willing to compromise. And power blocs are always looking for opportunities to flip countries, anyone who thinks theirs is lily white in that regard is deceiving themselves. But I doubt they expected or planned for what they've now got. They give the distinct impression of being a bunch of headless chickens stuck in the headlights to mix a metaphor- now- that they distinctly did not when the revolution was in progress. They, and the EU/US thought they saw a golden opportunity to permanently alter the facts on the ground in their favour, gift themselves the next set of elections by crippling the PoR and Communists, and get Ukraine's western track so far in advance that it wouldn't matter what the eastern parts wanted as by the time they had a say it'd be irreversible. They critically miscalculated just how much importance Russia puts on Ukraine, how reliable the eastern parts of the state apparatus would be having spent so much of their energy slagging them off and in some cases sacking them and, well, thought that their opponents would just suck it up and didn't really believe strongly enough to really react. Now, they don't have a clue what to do, they've broken their country, probably permanently.

Anti western? More like pro reality. You don't even actually dispute it, you just claim that the french and AU don't have enough troops as an excuse. Well, they had enough to change the facts on the ground by threatening Seleka and getting them to withdraw, just not, apparently enough to do the same when it's muslims getting killed instead of christians. If western involvement was a panacea for all Africa's ills colonialism would have been a wonderful era of enlightenment and prosperity, after all.

Right, so opposition goes on about revolution, about how some are being too "passive" and we then get a revolution- but he actually meant normal electoral stuff like making phone calls and putting up posters? Hmm. You even establish form in your interpretation, the Orange Revolution may have had some legitimacy in that the election was disputed, but the last one was not and the OSCE even went out of their way to say that rumours of it being fixed were wholly unsubstantiated. The only then current justification was sour grapes from losing in the first place- and that is not usually seen as a good justification. Who cares that the interview is with Tyanybok anyway? He's proud of himself, so he's honest about what he's doing because he thinks it's right and will appeal to people, much as some of the Right Sector people in Odessa were quite open about setting the Union building on fire because they thought it was fine to do so and despite Yatsenyuk trying to blame everyone except his supporters for it. He talks about fomenting a revolution and pre revolutionary atmosphere, about trying for an uprising, others being too "passive" and stuff like that and then non passive revolution is what happens. It's borne out by history that he was not talking revolution in some sort of abstract way. Or, it seems, it's "only one link", an interview with only the third most important leader. Apparently, only signed affadavits from Yatsenyuk and Klitschko (who I'd actually let off personally, since he's had the good sense to stay out of the clusterasterisk that is the Yatsenyuk/ Turchenov 'government' and was specifically called too passive, a veritable badge of honour considering the current circumstances) will do as evidence.

Neither Frank nor Francis is meant to be a sympathetic character, certainly. They have some amount of the anti hero about them when taking on those you suspect are equally immoral but they are pretty much outright villains by any objective measure. I find I can cope with that OK, so long as the villainy is done in an interesting manner and with style.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone describe prokul harem boko haram as anything other than a standardly unpleasant Al Qaida like. There are some fair reasons for muslims in Nigeria to feel discriminated against, and the violence has certainly not been one way as the western press tends to simplify it to- but then Nigeria is so corrupt as an entity that pretty much everyone is discriminated against in some way. Even so, boko haram don't have huge support even amongst the muslim population, they just have enough to be effective in a country that is still massively underdeveloped and has porous borders with equally underdeveloped countries. As for western interventions, well, CAR is a good example in all the wrong ways. Having got their favoured group (Christians, in this case) back into power the French are largely sitting on their hands while they settle scores with their muslim neighbours who were in power previously- french colonial and post colonial policy in a nutshell, get their favoured group into power and (try to) keep them there whatever they do, as was so shamefully on show in Rwanda twenty years ago. Yep, the practical effect of the Stingers was massively overstated, with the number supplied and the size of Afghanistan there was very little probability of running into one on any given sortie. The vast majority of Russian air losses were due to wholly conventional stuff like AAA and even small arms. But the presence of some stingers did change how the Russians behaved which made them a lot less effective.

Vampire Diaries is basically Beverly Hills 90210 with supernatural themes. Most of that network's output is Beverly Hills 90210 with [theme x] though. I've been watching the US version of House of Cards and to be honest I'm not all that impressed. I think it's due to two things, I just don't find Kevin Spacey particularly convincing when compared with Ian Richardson* and I did like the British version a lot. Overall the feeling is rather like the US version of Cracker, Fitz, where it was obviously based on the same source material but was just a bit worse in every meaningful respect. And it's just too long as well, another common complaint I have with US adaptations of brit shows- though at least it isn't 22ish episodes like a standard US season is. *the upper crust English accent delivering his disdainful soliloquy just works so much better, for me, than Frank's rather slight southern drawl. Plus, I don't like what they've done with his wife who in the english version is probably worse than Francis himself.

Don't know why I bother really, but here is the link on the planning of the 'spontaneous' anti Yanukovich protests, again*. Tyanybok is quite open about trying to foment a "pre revolutionary atmosphere" since Yanukovich's (free and fair, since I'm recycling links) election in 2010. Oh, and he quite freely and without prompting quotes Bandera in that interview as well. *Most likely so you can not read it, again, and insist that it wasn't planned sometime down the line, again.

And, as I've pointed out multiple times, Euromaidan was not spontaneous but had been planned- admitted, again by those inconvenient self proud Nationalists- from pretty much the point Yanukovich came to power. So it wasn't really anything Russia did, it started with the 'wrong' half of Ukraine electing the wrong President and has proceeded to the 'wrong' half of Ukraine resisting his ouster and the 'right' half government deciding to do exactly the same thing Yanukovich is accused of and inflict its vision on the rest of the country. If they intervene they'll go to Odessa because the marginal cost of going there as opposed to just plain invading any part of Ukraine will be, well, marginal, and they will want to get to Transnistria which is on the Moldovan border. On the other hand I cannot see them going to Kiev for much the same reasons they didn't go to Tblisi in 2008, and if they do they won't try and hold it. They'll certainly want the Dniepr canal that supplies water to Crimea now that Ukraine has been throttling supply, and that isn't really all that far from Odessa.

Not necessarily, some of the press coverage has, as always, not exactly been straight down the middle and there has certainly been a lot of dissimulation from both official Ukrainian sources and western politicians. It's possible that there was a genuine belief that those in the building were a cadre of Russian spetsnaz and specially trained Transnistrian infiltrators which seems to be the 'official' version the Ukrainians are putting out. Of course, those with some historic knowledge know that herding people into buildings and setting them on fire was a popular past time among Right Sector's direct antecedent the UPA in their pogroms during the nazi occupation- indeed, Kiev city hall had a prominent poster of Stepan Bandera added to its decor post Maidan. Plus, some of the more honest publications (such as the Grauniad) have noted the presence of Right Sector there, as well as some of their rather proud pronouncements ("The aim is to completely clear Odessa [of pro-Russians]," said Dmitry Rogovsky, another activist from Right Sector whose hand had been injured during the fighting. "They are all paid Russian separatists"), and have pictures clearly showing UPA flags as well. It's such a shame that loony tunes fascists are actually proud of being loony tunes fascists and like boasting about it, it makes it so much more difficult to spin the kindly Kievan bunnies vs evil Russian bear narrative effectively.

Wals, you just liked a post of Tagaziel's in which he described the people burned to death in Odessa as being "heavily armed separatists waging regular war against the government" a description which is... pretty despicable since they quite obviously were not anything like that by any stretch of reality and they most certainly were at very worst equivalent to what was regularly seen at Euromaiden. I'm not sure, but I think you may have missed the point just slightly yourself.

The standard is that anything done on the company's time or equipment is explicitly owned by the company and in some cases anything done even in the employees' own time is owned ie the employee is contracted exclusively to their employer. The first certainly would apply, the second would not as Zenimax knew that Carmack was working for Oculus simultaneously with them for a while and any alternative interpretation would defy all logic. Plus whichever rocket firm Carmack was working for as well might have to worry. (I certainly remember a case where someone reconstructed functionally (but not literally) identical code from memory and it was found to be OK legally because it was not under patent, but I cannot find a narrow enough set of terms to find a ref on google, everything is swamped by links to software piracy) And, in other random news...

Yep, the novels are why I say that the story in the prequel was not actually the problem many make it out to be. I've almost certainly said it before but all of Matt Stover's Star Wars novels are worth reading, but in particular the RotS novelisation as (and despite me liking the movie version a fair bit) it shows what could have been done with George's ideas. Yeah, the prequel fights and a lot of the set pieces gave me the distinct feeling that hey were included to do something else, hooks for games/ toys or pad the movie out or showcase sfx rather than serving the story- the pod racing and the pursuit of whatshername/ Jango at the start of AotC were utterly implausible and worse, far too long. I thought most of the space battle stuff were fine though except the utterly derivative and pretty silly one at the end of TPM, but then pretty most everything about TPM was a bit silly.

That's certainly true, though GNP arguments ultimately end up with it being better for everyone to join the EU, since it is the largest (at least theoretically integrated) economic bloc on the planet, if you took raw and literal national GNP everyone would be petitioning to join the US, or China in a few years. But it is not that simple, joining the EU has costs as well as benefits and it is the balance of those that determines it rather than a simplistic measure like GNP or even GDP/c. And, of course, there's no realistic prospect of Ukraine actually joining the EU in the short to medium term, it would just be an association agreement with most of the drawbacks but few of the benefits of full membership. As it is they saddle themselves with having their economy run from Geneva with the sole aim of paying back creditors. Though the most ironic part is that the biggest creditor is Russia, who may end up with both the best bits of Ukraine and the rest of the country still paying back loans to Russia, in penury. And, of course, Ukraine could have got both the best of both worlds if not for EU intransigence, ie both the agreement with the EU and with Russia since Russia was amenable, it was the EU that vetoed it and decided to try using the issue to flip the government instead. In retrospect they would have been far better off not listening to the US and accepting that deal.

Zenimax sues John Carmack/ Oculus and by extension Facebook for code theft. Verily, Zenimax is the Edge Games of games companies, and Bob Altman the Tim Langdell. Hopefully they have met their EA, not many fights I'd cheer for Facebook in, but Zenimax find a way... First time I've seen anyone try claiming that "know-how" developed at a company is owned by a company. It's rather like Walmart suing a sales technician who moves to selling petrol for Shell because they learned to use a till at Walmart, and it is a recipe for professional slavery. (And I don't even particularly like Oculus or Carmack, I even found doom/ quake etc boring)

Hack as compared to what, George Lucas? Dunno, I can imagine Abrams saying "jerkier, more lens flare" instead of "faster, more intense" as Lucas supposedly did. Certainly late model Lucas is worse that current model Abrams, but... I always end up comparing Lucas to McCatrney in the Lennon McCartney partnership. So long as Paul had John there to tell him when he was retreating up his own fundamental orifice he was fine, solo Paul though was a mess of self indulgent tripe all the more so because you could see where it could have avoided it. Once Lucas insulated himself from criticism you started to get incomprehensible stuff and pointless tinkering (like with 1414) that really just needed someone to stand up and say "that won't work George", but you got the distinct impression that that seldom if ever happened and was ignored if it did. The story in the prequel trilogy could have worked, it desperately needed a good script editing and better character direction, but the visual style and set pieces were still fine and even with the execution botched the 3rd makes (IMO) a better conclusion to its trilogy than RotJ made to its. But SW-RotJ is better overall because it had George's vision and strengths such as the exceptionally good and massively influential visual design, but brought others in to cover his weaknesses. (Well, not so much RotJ.) Abrams hasn't reached Lucas levels of success yet, so it remains to be seen if he'll end up with the same problems. Probably not, since Lucas had his own production company as well- but I watch Abrams' stuff and get this rather... Michael Bay feeling. It's all very kinetic and stylish, but there doesn't seem to be much beneath that.