Zoraptor

That's actually part of pretty much exactly what I am saying. The low hanging fruit has two major parts, the typical responses- "oh no, how terrible, I'll solve it by posting to the internet about it or maybe proposing a boycott that won't effect me in the slightest"- and people tending to get outraged at stuff that is fed to them by the media, ie easily available information, instead of worse stuff that is accessible with a little work. In a few weeks the media and most people will have forgotten about Uganda's laws, having never even known about or forgotten the Gulf's, or Malcador's example of Central African Republic. So in other words it has little work required to find out about it, at least in the general sense, and requires little effort in response. That is pretty much the definition of low hanging fruit. (I will freely acknowledge that that won't be true of everyone, of course; and that it is also a rather natural human response- which is self evident, since it wouldn't happen otherwise. Some people will do something practical about injustices, and remember over the long term, and do research. Most won't though, because those things are hard, and the next distraction will arrive.)

Conservative groups were censoring before liberalism and progressiveness were even accepted concepts. In part it's due to conservative groupings naturally being the ones in power and seeking to protect that, in part it's due to ideology. To argue the quote above you have to, for example, redefine the Roman Catholic Church, Inquisition era, as liberals and progressives. Which is somewhat difficult to do. Eppur si muove, fra'.

I know perfectly well why Uganda and Russia are being targeted now, I was pointing out that other places with worse, long standing laws, aren't. They're Low Hanging Fruit in terms of being something that is easy to get outraged about because it has zero practical impact on their life beyond the visceral thrill of moral outrage. The people calling for sanctions and boycotts over those two countries- and I can pull up recent threads on Russia very easily to prove the point- are going for an easy target because going after the hard and worse targets is, well, hard. Doing without vodka is a far, far different beast from doing without the oil you'd be missing if you went after the hard, worse, targets. Show me where hate is made legal in a constitution? Obvious conclusion is you were looking for an "I can't" answer, and indeed the question is written perfectly to get that answer- if you answer the question, as asked.

Well, it is selective criticism, and Low Hanging Fruit. The gulf states for example have far more repressive laws regarding homosexuals yet get barely a murmur. I certainly don't support the repressive laws- none of my or anyone else's business what consenting adults get up to, and it doesn't infringe the rights of 3rd parties since not being offended by what other people do isn't a right. But there's no doubt the outrage over them is applied selectively, and not universally. Because something like boycotting the Gulf would mean actual sacrifice on the part of the boycotters, whereas boycotting Uganda involves avoiding... basically nothing identifiable for most people, and boycotting Russia involves, rather bizarrely, buying then pouring luxury Latvian vodka down drains. The countries are as bad. They won't cut aid to Uganda unless they've already decided that it's going Chinese- because they know the Chinese will step up to the plate to replace it. And it has to be said that, by and large, the Chinese have been far better in their decade or so of pre-eminence in developing Africa economically than the west has been in a century plus.

Hate per se? No. Expression (vocal or written) of that hate against specific groups or individuals is prohibited by numerous countries. Trashman had already stated that in the post Bruce replied to, so Bruce was obviously referring to hate, the emotion, as opposed to hate speech. My point was obviously that you need specific laws to make things illegal (hence no law legalising having a nose or eating noodles) and he wouldn't find many if any making hate, the emotion, illegal. Basically Bruce's disingenuousness managed to elicit a response, though probably not the one he was aiming for.

All of the known regionally priced games are European based. Larian, for DivOS*, and they're in Belgium. And TWitcher 2/3 made by CDPR and distributed through Namco-Bandai Europe (ex Atari Europe, who distributed TW1). Clearly there's a limit to European fraternity when it comes to pricing video games. May be interesting when US based titles like WL2 or PoE goes on GOG to see if regional pricing is applied. WL2EA has marginal regional pricing on Steam, but PoE still has flat pricing via the portal. *I've got a kickstarter with them, which didn't have regional pricing so no effect there.

Not really, censorship is only a liberal value under the rather odd US definition of the term. Rest of the world (well, excluding Australian political parties) still uses the word properly. In any case much of the stuff censored in SP will offend 'conservative' types most as it regards abortion and the like, the 'liberal' offensive stuff is things like swastikas in Germany. It is kind of funny how the left and right can come together to decide (slightly different subsets of) what everyone else can view, but then paternalism has always been politically agnostic.

Can you show a single constitution that outlaws hate? Can you show a single constitution that allows noodle eating? Or having a nose? There's a reason why laws have to be made to make things illegal rather than having everything be illegal be default. As such, it is up to you to prove that generic hate is illegal, not on him to prove it's legal.

It most certainly is the people who speak Russian's business though, isn't it? And that's the point, not whether I personally care about it but whether they do, and whether the repeal of the law gives them legitimate grounds to be either upset or afraid of what else may come forth from the parliament. That is what the BBC should represent, if they were doing their jobs properly, because the why gives the context. If you don't provide the why then you are implying that there aren't any reasons- and they provide the context for the pro west protests every single time they're mentioned. Every. Single. Time. Repression of a people's language is usually taken as reasonable grounds for dissent, after all. And if you're really trying to do some sort of national unity thing instead of crude indulgent triumphalism then doing something that deliberately antagonises the people you're supposed to be uniting with is at very best counter productive. Funnily enough when it's joining Europe it's horribly, horribly undemocratic for that decision to be made- by the democratically elected President, on the basis of his winning an election- but when it's the other 50% making decisions- without a President and with a much reduced parliament- on things that effect the other lot then that is fine and dandy and won't even warrant a mention. My personal view? Maori is spoken by less than 10% of our population yet has official status, let alone being spoken by about half the population. And if a language is spoken by roughly half the population then why isn't it OK as an official language? In this case it's because the other roughly half want everyone else to speak their language, Ukrainian, plain and simple, and what those others want can go hang. And of course, it only became 'an issue for the Ukrainian people to decide' in US minds once the pro western people were in power, not before. The EU agreement wasn't such a matter, now was it, despite that effecting the Ukrainian people, that got a heap of outside interference from the west.

There's a jpg of the pre order page on the codex and it is under $20 for Russia. I do wonder if they'll end up losing money on this. Apart from the people who are peeved about the whole policy change (rather a lot, judging by the forums, and the worst thing you want is people who buy on principle telling you they're asterisking off as they probably mean it, unlike the boycott CoD crowd) there will be a subset rubbing their hands and temporarily taking a metaphorical trip to Yekaterinburg every time a game is released. TWitcher thing doesn't surprise me though, and won't effect me. I'd have to buy retail, probably via a UK remailer, as the download would be far too large.

Nah, seriously bro, it's the same price so buy it from the developers if anyone is interested (link also has info on the games, obviously). I mean, I rather like GOG despite their current shenanigans but not so much that I'd give them 6USD for the privilege of owning it there, especially since it's DRM free on the dev site as well. They have roguelike gameplay on pre set maps, lots of skills and the like, low graphics, storyline that does its job. Bit too much kiting would be my main gripe about it, and in 1 at least the time to walk places did get rather draining- and they do have fixed resolutions. Something like the Spiderweb games (Avadon etc) might be closest comparison.

Actually, from that Beeb article, comes some unsurprising news. Ah, an excellent opportunity to put "following the parliament's decision to repeal Russian language laws in favour of the Ukrainian language", or "following the ouster of the democratically elected President largely supported in the east", you know, some sort of reason for this movement, I'm sure they'll take it... Oh, they didn't. Still, unity government coming Real Soon Now, no doubt following implementation of more restrictive laws on people they don't like and won't vote for them, and including select Uncle Toms to give a veneer of legitimacy. Hmm, actually not reporting that isn't really surprising, is it. Can't make it look like their grievances might have some basis, can we, or that the old set of protesters and the new 'government' ain't doing legitimate stuff? Anyway, actual unsurprising news below... Ah, yes, those law enforcement agencies. Thank goodness he's making plans to send the Berkut (no doubt those nice western units though) into SE Ukraine to break up their protests. Still, at least there'll no doubt be more tolerance from the nice western Ukrainians. No doubt Oh, seems not. Just a nice, unthreatening comment about 'punishing' people who disagree with the new regime. I'm sure that will get some comment though... oh. Ah, that would be the parliament whose security is currently provided by Right Sector Svoboda militias, yes, with an artificial quorum/ the remaining government members voting under duress? Well, I'm sure you'll mention... no, not a word? Utterly asterisking useless, designed with a veneer of balance but sfa actual balance. (Of course I don't expect them to post half the stuff I do, in the way I do. I'm not a journalist, I can present the info any way I want with any slant I want, and my info is presented in this case to make the Beeb look stupid. But really, how on earth can you claim you're informing people when you- and it can only be deliberate- don't give any context to the complaints in the SE beyond a one line "Yanukovich had support in Kharkov".)

Actually... there are dead reporters in America. A recent one is Michael Hastings. And you can add a bunch killed in military actions by the US, too. That was of course the thing that really prompted Collateral Murder to be a big thing. Not the death of Iraqi civilians, not chaingunning a father and his children who stopped to help, but the fact that the previous people killed included journalists. And, of course, it illustrates another factor in terms of their not being press freedom. There's the practice of embedding, where favourable journalists get rewarded with exclusive access that "tells the true story"- it doesn't, of course, there are multiple restrictions and the journalists picked are already sympathetic, and made more so by being in very stressful situations with the people they're reporting on. There's also the practice of outright lying, and denying reporters access. There's no reason at all to have blocked Collateral Murder except for PR reasons. The US knew what had happened pretty much from the get go, but lied about it because it would make bad domestic copy. The argument always was that it would provoke anti US reactions like the Abu Ghraib photos did- but if you were in Iraq you knew about multiple such events because they happened there. In the more general sense you can see the acritical streak in western journalism very easily in the gaming media, and it is reflected in the more serious media as well. A very large proportion of both involves mindlessly regurgitating stuff given to them by interested parties- specified talking points etc. There's basically zero investigative stuff in either, because it takes work, doesn't give a guaranteed result and the people you're investigating will push back, hard. Maybe not push back in the sense that you'll end up at the bottom of the Potomac wearing concrete boots, but they'll certainly make your life as difficult as they can. A gaming journalist who cannot interview or get information from games companies is near useless, similar a political reporter who politicians and political entities refuse to talk to. A more relevant case in point is the Ukrainian 'parliament' decision to remove Russian- spoken by the 50% of Ukraine it doesn't represent- as an accepted language. There's been effectively no coverage of that, or of suggestions that the two democratically elected government parties (also representing the other 50%) be banned. Take for example this from the Beeb, no mention in the article of why separatism is now popular, or suggestion that it might be reasonable. Indeed the only mentions of such things come occasionally from people they interview, and from channels like RT. It's obvious that the BBC knows about it, and any balanced coverage might suggest that, perhaps, maybe, the actions of the new 'government' may have a slight influence on the attitudes of the other 50%.

It's a cross infection from the History Channel. There'll be ghosts, next.

I was going to get Eschalon on release, but their site crashed. I don't really see the point in giving someone 30% of the cash when I can give the developer 100% so decided to wait. Suppose I could get it now but I'm more in a strategy mood than RPG now.

Incoming trademark suit for use of "The South Island ". Too much chance that people might confuse our Middle Earth Tolkienesque Medieval Fantasy South Island for PB/ Derp Silver's version.

They should get the male protagonist voicing done by Sbarge. Now that would be trolling.

The reason they don't support laptop cards is that there are already a large number of different configurations even if you take desktop cards based on reference configurations. If you start doing things to reduce the heat or power draw as often done in a laptop then they will be changing how the card works, and make it potentially (and in practice almost always) less powerful than its desktop equivalent- as well as the aforementioned custom driver issues. That becomes a problem, of course, because if you have the usual sort of spec classification the equivalent laptop card may not work at all, may work with reduced features or may work considerably slower than the desktop version- or it may overheat the laptop/ card and cause crashing because most laptops are only really designed to run Win7, a browser and other productivity applications. You have to be prepared for a lot of extra support tickets due to those issues if you formally support laptop cards, it's easier to just not support them and put the risk onto the buyer. And on occasion manufacturers may massage the truth about their cards' capabilities as well. Intel insisted that their old integrated laptop cards supported OpenGL. This was a... questionable interpretation in that while some things relying on OpenGL would run, many wouldn't run or would but only at a pace that was slower than chilled treacle.

Nah, I don't troll. Others may think I do, but from my perspective no. But while I can honestly say that I've never said anything solely to get a negative or emotive reaction I equally am not overly concerned about saying things that I know will offend people or that people won't like. Because I know that if I were overly concerned I'd never write or say anything of any substance. If I don't think it's worth it I'll usually bite my tongue though, because it, uh, isn't worth it.

I don't have any real problem with people having different interpretations of what trolling is, despite the last line of my previous post. It is subjective in terms of trolling not having to be a deliberate attempt to elicit a reaction- if I posted my critique of Oblivion here it would be met by a muted reaction, some would agree, some would disagree, but it would be unlikely to get people upset; if I posted it at the Bethboards it would likely be regarded as trolling whatever my real reasons were. But it is also subjective in terms of not having an 'official' definition that can be referenced absolutely and objectively denotes what is trolling. That's why I rather like the comparison to art, while art does have a more or less set definition it is very much up to the individual as to what they personally consider art to be, and indeed art is very much defined by its context as well. Everyone does that, of course, but I think that this in particular runs into the basic free speech argument. I don't have the right to tell people not to offend me and say only stuff I find acceptable, and because that's a reciprocal right they also don't have the right to demand that I not offend them and only say stuff they find acceptable. Considering the sort of stuff people as individuals and collectives find objectionable there'd be very little to talk about if that were not the case. Take the hypothetical situation of there being someone who posts lots of stuff I find offensive. I'm not exactly sure what, since I struggle to think of anything I'd find actually offensive (edit: to clarify; as opposed to finding it something else instead such as stupid) that isn't actually illegal or bannable already, even somewhere like the codex. But anyway, it'd be tough noogies to me. I'd reserve the right to disagree, even strenuously disagree. What I wouldn't reserve is the right to tell them they cannot state their opinion simply because I don't like it.

And on the subject of enhanced editions, if you do get Blade of Destiny don't get the HD version which is still riddled with more bugs than a cheap restaurant in the tropics, get the originals. They've been free several times on GOG so there may even be people willing to gift them.

I wouldn't categorise it as a religious type dispute, personally. It's more a gestalt of two different arguments that are related to religious debates; a what is art? argument (eg the "knowing good trolling when you see it" vs "knowing art when you see it" I used earlier) and a matter of arguing definitions. Some people will insist that half a cow in formaldehyde is not art and that it is disgusting and offensive, some people will insist that not only is it art but it is great art, often at least partly because it does offend those people and achieves one of the things art should do, get a reaction. Some people will insist that trolling involves being 'bad', by its very definition, and anything troll like that is 'good' must be Something Else- parody, satire or whatever. Others will disagree. But without a central, accepted definition it is impossible to determine objectively that we are right and correct and the people arguing the reverse are over the event horizon of a wrongularity.

Because italics show emphasis, that something is important. And everything Volo says is important. We won zero medals, so I will take comfort in certain methods giving us number one position by population at the last summer games. In fact, we've only ever won one winter medal, but at least it was unique as the first medal won by anyone in the southern hemisphere.

I'd say that AP is already a cult classic, there's plenty of people who will rave about its good points. The actual gameplay is a bit clunky, rather like Mass Effect's, but if that can be got past then it certainly manages to make a fairly cliche storyline work well. And annoying every character in it is immensely entertaining.

Here's the wiki article on Svoboda. It is wikipedia, so take with a grain of salt of course. There are plenty of pictures- including in streams and the like from 'reputable' news sources- that show their old party and other neo nazi symbols being used. Personally, I'd lump them in with the BNP and similar. Beyond merely Nationalist, not as far as complete neo Nazi.