Zoraptor

TLDR: nobody including the major economies paid any attention to the financial criteria for Euro integration, and in a currency union the currency is always run for the strongest member(s), not the weaker. That's great if you're the stronger members, if you're the weaker it sucks. There isn't really any debate about it. Yes, Greece did cook the books. They weren't alone in that, nor in there being little to no oversight or auditing, while other countries simply ignored the criteria- France was over the annual debt/ GDP limit, for example, for every single year except 2006, but since it was France nobody cared. So too, at various times, was Germany. You can check out the adherence here, in the member states by SGP adherence table. Long story short, the only long term EU member and Euro user to adhere to the guidelines was wee diddly Luxemburg. And maybe Finland, depending on if you set the 'long term' bar at less than 20 years membership. They wanted the Euro launch to be a success more than wanting it to be sustainable and work for everyone, indeed as set up currently it is, basically, a money siphon that pumps cash from the poorer regions into the richer. As for the specifics of why joining the Euro is a bad idea for a weak economy that is simple economics. With a floating exchange rate for your own sovereign currency the value is set by several different factors- economic strength (or perceived economic strength, says I from a bubble currency country. NZD volume is only slightly less than the Chinese Yuan, utter madness even considering the Yuan ain't floating freely), interest rates, money supply ('quantitative easing', also related to interest rates) among them; and you have considerable amounts of control over the rate even in a theoretically freely floating system. Generally speaking, a weaker economy has a lower exchange rate relative to a stronger economy which makes exports more competitive, while a sovereign currency also allows debt reduction by quantitative easing, ie printing money. Neither of those is available to the PIIGCS. In a monetary union the exchange rate is determined mostly by the strongest, largest economies, as they contribute most to the unified pie. For them it is an advantage in fact, because the weaker economies pull down on currency value which makes their exports more affordable than they 'should' be in a sovereign currency situation, ie the Euro is lower valued than the Deutchmark would be given the strength of Germany's economy, because Greece et al pull down on it. This makes Germany's exports disproportionately competitive worldwide, and they are disproportionately competitive within Europe too. But that is exactly reversed for Greece, their exports and tourism are uncompetitive because the stronger and far larger German economy pulls the Euro value up from where their sovereign currency would be, Greece cannot become more competitive as they do not control their currency value at all, nor can they cannot inflate debt away as they cannot print money.

OSCE. There's a slight difference. If it's like last time we'll hear lots and lots about the poor non NATO Swede, a bit about the NATO members, and pretty much nothing about the bunch of Ukrainian military officers they were taking for a tour of rebel defences. And there are also reports that they've been shelling themselves to smear the brave and courageous Ukrainian military! I hear there are reports that the rebels turfed babies out of incubators and impaled them on their spiked helmets, then ate them! With horseradish sauce! Made from real horses! Funny though, rebels 'using human shields and staging false flag operations' is straight out of Bashar Assad's PR play book from 2011, right down to blaming external sources for everything. Oh by the way, since I've been reminded of monumentally crap propaganda regurgitation for some odd reason; number of Transnistrians burned alive in Odessa, zero. Number of Russians burned alive in Odessa, zero. Number of actual Odessans burned alive by Banderans in Odessa, well, all of those who died. Pro Ukrainian sources couldn't lie straight in bed.

Some people seriously do believe that NSDAP were socialist because of the S (and, indeed, the A) in their name. Of course, the nazis were stridently- to put it mildly- anti left wing and pretty much immediately liquidated what left wing elements they had such as Rohm and the SA after taking power... And you don't tend to get the same people believing that the DPRK is best most democratic Korea and DDR the most democratic Germany because of their names. To be fair though, the left/ right wing dichotomy is ridiculously simplistic considering the complexity of most party's policies.

It may have something to do with EA, since we don't know what their sales or submission terms are- assuming they're equivalent it has nothing to do with EA, certainly. Open/ closed seems to be one of those things like drm/ drm free where if you like the platform it's open and drm free, even if it isn't, whereas if you don't like the platform it's closed and riddled with drm. I still remember seeing people say that Origin was drm even for titles you could download and then never open Origin again for, while Steam doing exactly the same thing was drm free- while insisting there was no logical disconnect there. The only practical difference being that they liked steam and disliked Origin. Steam is not an open system. Anyone who believes it ever will be is deluding themselves.

I have a shelf of chinese teas that I get for being a good sport and eating things like chicken feet, tendons, some sort of deep fried tripe and 7 year egg. I don't know what most of them are though as I cannot read mandarin and know I would spend a huge amount of time diving through wikipedia looking for what they are if I started, but I do rather like the ones that make a sort of floral arrangement when infused as that rather tickles my fancy.

Bro, it's sarcasm. Based mainly on people and media organisations like the BBC shouting about the use of transparent ballot boxes in elections they don't like- Crimea and the Donetsk/ Lugansk referenda- and how they were a sign of them being undemocratic while not mentioning them at all when it's Ukraine, France or someone else they do like using them. There are perfectly reasonable, er, reasons for using transparent boxes- you can physically see your vote go in, if you fold it in half no one can see your vote any more than an opaque box, no possibility for trapdoor bottoms and it, ironically given the picture oby linked, can make ballot stuffing more obvious. Personally I'd go with standard opaque box standing on open bottomed table, but I have no problem with transparent boxes. If I were to have an actual rail against any voting system as undemocratic and dangerous it would be machine voting or most especially computer/ online voting. Which are various degrees of increased opaqueness, and are prone to hackery andor the incompetence or malfeasance of the manufacturer. And thus will no doubt be brought in at some time in the future.

I have some sympathy for that labelling to be honest, as there simply isn't a, er, simple term for the phenomenon. If you want a precise description you have to write/ say half a paragraph to get anything approaching accurate. Part of the problem is that you have the traditional right wing parties that are almost to a man True EU Believers so there has to be some differentiation from them, but then anything to the right of those right wing trad parties has to be at least further right. Eurosceptic is a bit better, but has the baggage of being saddled with association both with parties that self identify themselves as such but then do/ achieve nothing about it for years on end, as with the tories in the UK, and with including the more loony and genuinely far right fringe, plus, depending on whether it's a major concern or not, anti EU left wing groups as well. And 'nationalism' has picked up a lot of baggage as well, unfortunate because little n nationalist is basically what a lot of those labelled as far right are. Though again, in some ways even parties like Syriza in Greece are little n nationalists for these purposes. As a phenomenon the current electoral radicalism is understandable. You had 150+ years of old definition nationalism in Europe that has resulted in the existence as (theoretically at least) independent countries of most of the current members of the EU. The EU is, fundamentally and by its very design, not nationalist and antithetical to nationalism- it's designed as a supra national governmental entity and has been since its inception as the EU. It's going against the flow of history.

Have to admit I had a little chuckle at those super undemocratic transparent ballot boxes showing up again. And, of course, quite widely across the European elections as well.

Default has no friendly fire, at least in the OC. Don't imagine MotB was different. And yes she will, with the utmost glee. Plus a definite lack of irony considering her personality.

It was a cure for insomnia? I liked the 1st and third movies well enough, but I'm pretty down on the whole idea of remakes/ reimaginings/ soft reboots and the like right now. They're just boring and unimaginative cash grabs scrabbling in the dust for the gems that made the originals good (hint: often it was that they were original) in 90% of the cases. This is better than, say, rebooting spiderman barely after the celluloid had cooled on Spidey3 since there's been a longer period of time and it isn't necessarily a reboot but when I think about movies that need sequels and that I'm waiting for JP ain't going to be on the first page. Really, I blame Indy 4. I liked the 1st and 3rd movies there as well, but had no real wish to see a fourth instalment let alone what was actually supplied as the fourth instalment. While Lucas tends to get a lot of the blame for that mess Spielberg was also involved, and it was an 'in continuity' sequel rather than a reboot. And it didn't go well.

I'd question how many people that would be useful for full stop. Maybe if you have an enormous house, but then if you have an enormous house it would probably still be cheaper to just buy another TV and put it in the computer room. Otherwise... if you have a gaming laptop as increasing numbers do you can carry it around, if you don't then you need to be sufficiently worried about gaming on your TV, not have direct access to it with your computer and not have any other, cheaper alternatives like an HD cable. Mind you, I really cannot see the point in steamboxes in general since they're basically a not particularly cheap way to play 10% of the games on steam. Apart from the streaming. Which I don't think would be very useful either. And in other news, Zenimax proceeds with their suing (warning, pdf w/ legalese) of Oculus Rift. Sounds fairly convincing, but then again all filings in legal cases sound convincing, that's what they're designed to be.

I read that as Disneyworld Prosper*. Sadly, I suspect that would actually improve the movie. *Can't blame myself, mention of 'concept art' and the capitalisation of Proper...

Have to say, I would have personally preferred a real spiritual succesor for AC even though I've never played it. This sounds like a just another Civ. Sounds like another CivRev- it is, to paraphrase interview guy #1, faster and more intense, much like George Lucas's directing style. And that's hardly a great comparison to make even for somewhere as banal and hapless as RPS has become, especially when it's pretty obviously a cash grab and reskin of CiV right down to 1upt. If you really haven't played Alpha Centauri you should. It really is very good.

Ah, but Many Worlds theory suggests it's entirely possible to create parallel universes via time travel, which is travelling between dimensions. From that it is only a small jump to travel to fictional universes, because if you have infinite branching possibilities then everything is true somewhere. Now, I have to admit to not having read Doctor Brown's dissertation on the topic recently, but if you have a Qunari and a DeLorean together then logic dictates that one or the other has to have travelled interdimensionally since Thedas is a pre industrial society which has yet to invent the internal combustion engine let alone a flux capacitor while there was a known absence of Qunari in early 80s Belfast or the mid 80s USA. Quod Erat Demonstrandum!

He's in a DeLorean. He can go back to a time when Qunari had no horns- ie pre 2010- and that problem is solved. It's a pretty good way of dealing with any continuity issues. Decapitated Leliana after defiling the Ashes, as every second person seems to have? Nope, Marty McQun went back and stopped you, so she can be in the subsequent games with no problem.

They'd be aiming for a Just In Time type process presumably, where the parts are produced separately and then bolted together. More difficult than doing the same thing for a car or other purely mechanical device, but in theory at least it should speed things up a reasonably amount. Practically... well, who knows. But if the trend towards fewer, bigger games continues in the AAA field they'll have to do something similar as a single studio capable of producing a bigger game in a standard ~2 year timeframe is becoming increasingly unworkable- indeed even those penny pinchers at Activision are shifting to 3 year dev time for the CoDs. Doing things in parallel at multiple studios would be an alternative to increasing the dev cycle.

Bioshock 2 had 5 teams working on it- 2k marin (main design), 2k shanghai (textures), Arkane (1st levels) and whoever it was did the MP component; plus Irrational/ 2k Boston at the start- and that was five years ago. 10 seems extreme but there's no fundamental reason why you could not get sound/ motion capture/ level design done the same way. It does take good supervision, but that is what you have producers for. Presumably the main reason for doing it is because it'll get done quicker plus make use of cheaper labour.

Polonium 210 is an alpha emitter, and as such it will not radiate from a person since even skin is enough to stop it. You want a nice beta or even better gamma emitter for your simile. Now that this vital information has been disbursed I return you to the eternal debate: misogyny vs misterogyny, which is worse and why?

Meh, looks like the link expires as it's pics of the last 24 hours. If you click the archive button at top right you can get to previous days' versions though. It ain't particularly interesting, they are just the pictures that were previously posted, from a recognised source. It's basically the same as the "Friends of Syria" meeting that is also being held, more designed to build up public confidence and give the impression of support/ that something is being done than actually resolve anything. Mostly harmless, mostly pointless and they'll probably come out with some sort of roadmap or whatever at the end of it.

Bro, the UN doesn't have attack helicopters of its own, as with other equipment members supply them (popular with low budget countries as the UN pays for their upkeep etc) as needed. Using UN branded helicopters would be very bad, only putting large red crosses all over your tanks and APCs would be worse for that type of infraction. The Geneva Conventions specifically note it as big P Perfidy, to whit: "(d) The feigning of protected status by the use of signs, or uniforms of the United Nations or of neutral or other States not Parties to the conflict." (Doubt it's deliberate deception, of course, but it's still bad enough)

Burning does that to vehicles. Pics are definitely genuine.

They were better in Awakenings, certainly, though better than the darkspawn in Origins ain't saying anything at all. As for whether that thread will be picked up, it seems unlikely given DAI's focus on demons, but who knows. Well, alanschu I guess... Apart from Awakenings they were utterly generic Tolkienesque cliches though, right down to human/ dwarf -> hurlock/ genlock mirroring elf/ ent -> orc/ troll direct from Tolkien himself. They did their job as mooks to the slaughter but that's about the best that can be said of them.

That was the top 50 it was based on. This is Codex RPG List: Enhanced Edition with reviews and stuff. (Next will come Codex RPG List: Enhanced Edition: Director Admin's Cut, then Codex RPG List: Platinum)

What we really need are some hard figures about desertion rates in the Ukrainian army, apart from the 80% for those in Crimea. We already know much of the police force is gone, but if the eastern part of the army is deserting or starts to desert in large amounts to the rebels then there's trouble. And in 'interesting parallels' news, I note that Ukraine has restricted cut water flow into Crimea. From April 28, but for some mysterious reason there's difficulty finding an english language news report of it, not sure why when western news is so well balanced. Which, I am sure, is completely different from Russia's potential restriction of gas flows if Ukraine doesn't pay in advance, after all, one is an essential for life as we know it and the other is only water. And in "what did you expect you muppets" news Russia cuts the US off from ISIS and the rockets they use to launch military satellites. Which is surprising and underhanded, and an unwonted escalation. Sanctions should only be applied on stuff which isn't useful to us, anything reciprocal is deeply unfair and mean. I don't need a solution, I wouldn't have ended up in that situation in the first place. It's like demanding a solution for a broken motorbike problem where the motorbike has been deliberately disassembled, the solution is: don't break in the first place what you cannot fix.

I'm just glad that there's an authoritative poll from a prestigious institution determining, once and for all, that F2>BG2 and Planescape Torment is the greatest RPG of all time. Will help with arguments with all those- now objectively wrong- people who believe differently. I don't agree with the list wholesale, but it's certainly better than those RPG lists that have CoD- you play the role of a shooter dude, duh- and the like on them. (I actually was going to stick the list into the Random News thread, but decided it was a bit too close to the top 50 one it's based on and which was discussed when it was released. Still, good effort and good resource from the Codex, whatever nits people may have)