Zoraptor

No, I'm rebutting what you say. You don't like it, sure, I said you wouldn't because you're emotionally invested. Don't worry, it's an understandable reaction, people don't like being told that their pet cause isn't quite as squeaky clean as they like to imagine. Lol, what was that about straw men? 'His own people' are killing police, what's happening to them is exactly what would happen anywhere else including in the west- and is considerably less than what happened in, say, Egypt. The point about Yanukovich being elected is, of course, that he was elected while those the protesters back lost in the fairest- per OSCE- election Ukraine had. As I said, you, and the protesters, want to replace the duly elected President with one you happen to like, despite losing, despite being the minority, and want to impose their President and their vision on the majority. Can't be spun, it's fact, and you know you cannot refute it. No Euromaden is criminal because it's occupied the centre of a city for 3 months and outright killed a bunch of people. That's criminal anywhere, including the EU. Doesn't become non criminal just because you like them. Something the EU and US realise as well deep down, but realpolitik. See, you don't rebut the point that such an occupation and protest would not be allowed in the west, because it cannot be rebutted, everyone, everyone knows it wouldn't be allowed. And yet it not being allowed is suddenly a horrendous crime that would be fixed by, er, joining the EU where it wouldn't be allowed either? Sheesh, if it were south/ eastern Ukrainians doing the occupation you know perfectly well you wouldn't be standing up for their rights, and neither would the US or EU. It'd be the fuzz, cleaning house of violent anarchists/ communists backed by those evil russkies and trying to overthrow a democratic government. You aren't a mere protester when you're biffing a molotov or shooting a gun, you aren't a mere protester anywhere if you do such things. As I said, and unsurprisingly you ignored, if you did the same things in the west there'd be dead protesters. Quid Pro Quo, What is Good for the Goose etc. And this latest flare up is confirmed by everyone as being started by the protesters, after a truce had been agreed. Well yes, the sky is still blue, water is still wet. EU as a customs union/ border free area sure, EU as a monolithic bureaucratic dictatorship is most definitively bad. Hmm, and you have the gall to accuse me of building straw men? I started by saying that Yanukovich is corrupt and basically Kuchma jr, I just said that your sainted alternatives are no better and have provably been so- and they aren't legitimately elected President. And yet, you cannot refute anything I've said. There's plenty of refutation possible. If I'm wrong.

More like Greg and Ray deciding to shut down Bioware when they left. Just simply could not happen, had to be the 2k execs whatever Levine says. It certainly isn't unusual behaviour though, 2k has shut down IG's two sister studios (IG Australia as was, 2k Marin) inside the last year or so, they just couldn't PR that as being anything other than sales of XCOMFPS not justifying the 5 years dev time. Having allegedly spent $200 mill on B:I attention needs to be deflected to minimise damage.

Whereas, of course, breaking up the Occupy Wall Street protests in the US, or the various tactics used in the west ("kettling") shows an ultimate respect for political expression and the right to protest. Well no, protests get broken up all the time in the west. Try occupying the centre of Washington or London and see how long they last, bet it wouldn't be 3 months. Try shooting at the police or setting them on fire while you're at it, for the authentic Ukraine protest experience- I'm sure those western police won't respond violently but with a sternly worded letter of censure... Yeah, they were. They lost the election; the other guy won. That makes them losers, QED. You want to disenfranchise the majority because you happen to agree with the minority's views, you want to set aside all those- the majority- who voted for Yanokovich, for the people who lost. I know perfectly well you'll argue the point to the death, but that is what you're doing, you're just dressing it up in palatable clothes. George Bush, Tony Blair, Frankie Hollande, more popular leaders, every single democratic leader in history most likely have two things in common, they won their elections and some people, somewhere in their country are right royally peeved that they won. Nah, I'm not. I'm saying that painting the protesters as valiant freedom fighters for honesty, progress and the Ukrainian way is a load of rubbish because their chosen bunch of politicians are as corrupt as the other lot, when they were in power last time things did not change; and "once we rule, everything will be OK, trust us" is a position that has a... somewhat questionable history of accuracy, prediction wise, from General Al-Sisi to Robespierre. To the, uh, Orange Revolution in, uh, Ukraine, after which they still have Tymoshenko and Yanukovich. Oh please, painting the protesters as some bunch of beatnik pacifist kumbaya singing lentil eaters is complete rubbish. They've had molotov roostertails and suchlike from the start, and have had a hard right element that was spoiling for a fight. And most significantly, while 16 protesters in a day weren't killed in OWS neither were 10 policeman killed on that same, metaphorical, day. No doubt those police were unfortunate enough to be hit by a particularly nastily cut slice of papaya, to paraphrase Edmund Blackadder. True. OWS were generally peaceful, and there were very few fatalities involved. Certainly not. Yanukovich still has support, the vast bulk of the US would happily have fired GWB into the sun a year or so into his second term, Yanokovich also hasn't managed to get thousands of his own people and tens of thousands at minimum of foreigners pointlessly killed in a war fought under knowingly trumped up pretexts. It's specifically designed to have 'problems with representation' because those pesky 'people' things keep getting in the way of what bureaucrats know to be necessary and beneficial. The EU is run by Sir Humphrey Appleby, for Sir Humphrey Appleby.

Yeah, quoting myself so bad form, but there's a pretty good article on the IG/ B: I situation over at Gamasutra which deals with some of the details of the situation. Perhaps most significant was the insider who said a year ago that IG would be shut down if B:I was not a major sales success but there's also quite a lot of info on how things went so wrong. I rather suspect that Thiaf may be the next, similar, problem child for AAA, though I suspect Eidos Montreal may survive as a Deus Ex studio.

Yeah, and Tymoshenko or whoever ends up ultimately as leader of her bloc would do exactly what was best for her clique- that is, after all what she did while in power. Indeed, rather like Khordokovsky in Russia I've not heard anyone significant say that she didn't do what she was convicted of, the only defence is that others did the same and didn't get prosecuted. I'm not going to get all morally indignant about having pro russian corrupt officials instead of pro west corrupt officials just on narrow ideological grounds. Still, one is the democratically elected corrupt President, the others are losers. Yeah, random link on internet tells Ultimate Truth. I read your link, but it was irrelevant. I was after all, talking about Yanukovich whose election was passably free and fair per OSCE. For reference, the OSCE reports for 2007, when Yuchenko was president, and 2012. The complaints are pretty much identical in each, it's just the wording that is different. Heh, so was Occupy Wall Street. Oddly enough when the po-po's moved in to break up them there weren't lots of police deaths, perhaps because they actually were peaceful protesters. Yeah, and GWB didn't turn the US into a parody. Obama didn't get elected and then end up ignoring a bunch of stuff he said he'd do, or stop doing. Politicians everywhere say what they need to to get elected, then it's go asterisk yourself for x years until the next election cycle. $15 billion in low cost loans for Ukraine versus joining the EU, getting sweet FA for the decades it would take to get accession (if you ever do, per Turkey) and having your economy be subservient to Germany's in perpetuity. And all to join a system which is a blatantly undemocratic technocracy. Ultimately the problem in Ukraine is the same as in any number of ex SSRs, they were designed with no intention of ever being independent, and you had leaders like Uncle Joe and Nikita K deciding to reward their home SSRs with bits of others. Chop the country in half, west can go clean Brit and German toilets for a living, east can go back to Mother Russia. Meh, whole post soviet thing is a clusterasterisk of western hypocracy, Kosovo must be independent, Abkhazia is an integral part of Georgia; apartheid is bad, but not in Latvia or Lithuania; democracy is wonderful and cures all ills, but only when it elects politicians we like.

For once I agree almost entirely with obyknven. Tymoshenko got into politics for the same basic reason Berlusconi did, to make sure she didn't get prosecuted for corruption in her gas dealings. Yanukovich is neither better nor worse seeing as he is basically Kuchma jr, but at least his deal with the Russians got the Ukraine a lot of cash, better than the pittance Brussels offered. The whole situation is replete with ironies, the protesters are complaining about the constitution giving the president too much power. Oddly enough it was brought in by their previous darling Viktor Yuchenko and only became a problem now it isn't their guy in office. Yeah, most of western Ukraine. But let's be frank here, Yanukovich got more vote % than, say, Margaret Thatcher ever got (by a very large margin) and won by almost the same margin that Obama beat Romney by. If they have a mandate then so does he. It's much like the situation in Thailand, the minority is throwing a wobbly and trying to impose their views on the majority. I'm frequently told that the right time to dispute decisions is at an election, indeed most western politicos will happily do whatever they want in office no matter what they promised and that's precisely what their defenders will say. Yes. Quite.

Well yeah, I would categorise a good troll as being a productive thing. It doesn't have to be productive in terms of making people think or reconsider stuff, it can be productive in terms of simply thinking it's funny. In terms of having a different world view, that's rather more difficult to quantify because with a good troll you're often not quite sure exactly what the person's view is. In that sense it is very similar to satire/ irony/ sarcasm in that it's a technique used to show 'disagreement' without necessarily indicating an alternative. I have seen trolling which runs counter to my general beliefs and still thought that it is effective, but then I'm not usually a good target for trolling myself since I at least try not to take things too seriously already.

I'd tend to agree that most trolling is negative or 'bad', but that is also at least partly because people tend to label stuff they simply don't like as trolling. If I were to write a perfectly sensible list of things wrong with, say, Oblivion, and then go and post that on the Bethboards a large proportion of people there would think I was trolling no matter what my actual intention was. In terms of good trolling I'd actually go back to the Tali Sweat Analysis post. I don't really know or care what the initial reason for that post was and whether it was intended as trolling, but if I had made that post it would have had two purposes. Firstly, to make anyone who is really obsessive about such things look a little silly by taking it seriously; and secondly to make the people who get upset at other people's obsessions look silly by taking seriously a post that wasn't serious. And yep, I'd say that Poe's Law is a pretty good match for most good trolling. I'd say that most good trolling uses 'soft' provocativeness. The internet equivalent of, say, walking up to someone and slapping them is bad trolling, pretty much by definition. I'd view being provocative in this context to be more similar to how films and the like can be provocative. I wouldn't say that trolling is a particularly effective way to get an argument across though, but... when it comes right down to it convincing someone they're being silly, or 'winning' an argument on the internet by any means is usually an uphill battle- and, of course, a matter of opinion as to whether it's silly/ wrong in the first place, most often.

Yep. Can only imagine what the response would be if protesters killed a bunch of police in the US/ UK or Europe while trying to topple the democratically elected president, pretty sure it would be slightly different in tone from the US and EU's current pronouncements on the situation.

Irrational is already pretty gutted on the senior people front. Just about all of them apart from KL left during B:I's development, and it clearly had a troubled development. I'd be moderately surprised if Levine were still at 2k in a year's time, personally, the whole thing reads like spin. Indeed, I'm not really sure from whose point of view any contract may be being worked out. $200 million USD (sorry, original NYT article is now paywalled) was the supposed budget, even 4 million digital sales through their own portal would barely turn a profit for 2k. You'd have to suspect that the actual break even point would be multiple millions more, perhaps as many as 7 million full price copies. They'd have lost a fairly significant amount of money on 4 million sales if the 200 million cost is accurate.

There's a difference between being tolerant and kowtowing to every viewpoint. You can allow people to worship in whatever manner they want/ say what they want, without agreeing with them or allowing them to inflict their views on anyone else- indeed, tolerance does not mean you have to keep your mouth shut when you disagree, just that you accept you don't have the right to force others to your viewpoint. The worst sort of intolerance is the sort that is dressed up in the vestments of tolerance, which claims to be doing stuff 'for the greater good' (the greater good), whether it be someone trying to save your eternal soul from damnation or something else. Oddly enough, Stephen Fry himself has one of the more widely quoted quotes on the matter and subject of people being 'offended'.

Apparently there is a drop in soda consumption, according to Coke's financial results. Probably the healthiest soda alternative is to just buy carbonated water and use a decent fruit concentrate for flavouring. It's always a bit difficult talking about buying healthy food because you're never sure how it is in other countries. Personally, if I were looking to eat healthily and cheaply I'd be cooking all my own food, buying big sacks of stuff like potatoes, onions and carrots as a base for most meals. They're all pretty healthy and available for roughly a dollar a kilogram. That's cheaper than buying pre prepared stuff, though it takes more time to prepare. Then again we also have a lot of advertorial type stuff on TV that is 'feed 4 for $15' or food in a minute type stuff which is completely voluntary, 'free' (ie provided by companies, not the govt), food education which I suspect is not typical.

Can't see it. 2k bought Irrational, it's one of their internal studios. Feargus Urquhart when he was running BIS would not have been able to just decide he wanted a break with a few close friends to chill and throw ideas at a whiteboard, nor any other subsidiary manager. At absolute minimum it would have to be done with the approval of the parent company- and the vast majority of the time it's the parent company spinning their decision to wind down a division by getting Someone Else apart from Herve Caen or Straus Zelnick to sugar coat the news. I'd almost suspect that there's a contract to be worked out, with regards to Levine. Unsurprising that B: I didn't sell that well though, 5 years and a massive advertising budget meant it would always be an uphill battle to break even.

Trolling is like art, you know it when you see it. Which probably sounds a bit glib, but it's about as accurate and categorical a statement as can be made about it. To be more specific, satire may be trolling and most good trolling involves a very large dollop of satire- but it's usually satire that is presented as being a serious position or statement. Same with either irony or sarcasm which for these purposes are just subsets/ techniques of satire. Trolling doesn't have to challenge a person's beliefs (beliefs is perhaps slightly the wrong word anyway) and certainly more regular techniques can be used to do the same, but I'd argue that good trolling has to have an element of that to be trolling at all. After all, if nobody cares then nobody responds, and that isn't really a troll.

You might think that, but I couldn't possibly comment. (Series 1 of the British House of Cards, and Cracker are probably my fondest remembered dramas of all time. Still haven't seen the US version. HoC that is, I did see the US version of Cracker, "Fitz", and it wasn't particularly good)

The majority of bad trolls are just noise though, as is most of the internet. With the greatest of respect to people who post such things, some random person on the internet talking about potty training their toddler or going out to lunch or how that guy on Days of Our Lives is totally hot or whatever is not fundamentally more worthwhile than someone saying that Planescape Torment sux because it is a jRPG that is worse than KOTOR (and they're an authority because they played KOTOR 7 times) for the hundredth time. They're both things that you tend to read and forget, unless you have some sort of investment in them. Yeah, there are really bad trolls who will do pretty despicable things, but then there are always 'bad' people who will do despicable things. Picketing a funeral because you think God is punishing America for its sin, and being serious about it, has exactly the same practical effect as doing the same thing 'for the lulz'.

EA Partners is now defunct, so KoA will be the last one for the forseeable future. (Titanfall is a similar set up to an EA Partners game, but is Origin exclusive)

Celine Dion, Bryan Adams, Alanis Morissette, Nickleback. Oh god yes. Listening to talk back radio after the All Blacks lose at rugby is a beautiful, beautiful thing. So many people whose lives have been literally ruined by 15 blokes from New Zealand failing to beat 15 blokes from somewhere else as if that actually means something to their life. (Unfortunately, if the ABs lose domestic violence complaints go up markedly...)

A good troll is a thing of beauty. It speaks to the human condition, it illuminates the darkness and is an integral option in ecommunication. A good troll is satire, it is well thought out, it is intelligent. A bad troll is a pointless exercise in futility; lazy, facile and worthless. Of course, you can say the same thing about any style of post on the internet, they range from a potential "oh wow, Road to Damascus the scales fall from my eyes" to "please give me that 15 seconds of life and 20 IQ points back". A good troll pokes the self righteous, self important and self serious streak everyone has, and commits the worst crime imaginable to those people- making them look silly. That isn't always possible to do with impeccable logic and Socratic method. People need to be trolled, on the internet and in real life. Everyone needs their fundamental beliefs challenged at various points, if for no reason other than to affirm that you still believe them. And if your fundamental beliefs include the sorts of trivialities that people typically get trolled over then... well, a bit of self examination would not go amiss about whether Pikachu really could take Darth Vader in a fight is a truly important argument to have.

I didn't said that it either A OR B kind of thing... and from the looks of it you made a huge mess of my comments(did you read older comments?) Thing is, you confirm what I say further down where you specifically state about it being done via direct taxation, ie a tax increase with a rebate for the poor people, or a direct tax levy on the 'well off' overweight. Both of which I specifically mentioned. Really though, you seem a bit confused about what you are saying, and your response to any criticism to it is just to restate it again and claim people are being 'negative'. Yep, that's exactly what I said. They aren't expensive, certainly not compared to the system you are proposing, and if you call them ineffective, well, the punitive taxes on cigarettes doesn't stop everyone from smoking either. Education campaigns work perfectly fine, you don't have to be a paternalist zealot espousing fundamental truths to the great unwashed when doing educational campaigns but you should start from the position that most people would like their children to be healthy, even if they don't care that much about themselves.

Be warned, psi is very difficult for a first play through, if you go pure psi. It then gets very easy once some of the higher tier powers are available. If you go hybrid with a few weapon skills it's a lot easier. Saving resources is the name of the game for a first play through as well, as you will run out of bullets or psi hypos on the second level most likely, and if you're not careful. Smack as much as you can with the wrench. Personally, I'd consider taking 1 skill in modify and maintenance at some point, if you plan on using ranged weapons but they're discretionary. Repair is close to useless.

Yes, everyone else is suggesting things of limited effectiveness and high cost while your suggestions of tax increase with rebates or whatever it was you came up with for not targeting the poor is both effective and low cost. Or not, seeing as it's a bureaucratic nightmare where you have people being weighed yearly or whatever to decide how much tax they pay. I'll give it more rebuttal than it deserves: it's a bureaucratic nightmare that will cost massively in admin, it will require people going to doctors or whatever once a year as an added cost*, they'll use crappy, simplistic but 'objective' metrics like BMI (which make extremely fit but muscle mass based sportsmen classify as obese), there will be loopholes, those who can afford accountants will be able to avoid it/ those with enough money will ignore it so it won't discourage those with money, it doesn't tackle the base problem at all but treats the symptom, if you have to claim the money back a lot of poorer people won't know how or that they can. There's an almost unlimited number of potential problems. Now, you might say that that is just nitpicking or whatever, but they are real potential problems. You cannot wish them away by saying that everything will be OK just because. That also isn't being negative when suggestions have been made to, for example, improve education around the issue, ie treating the problem rather than the symptom. I mean, from the examples I give below you don't have taxes applied for melanoma based on whether you're tanned or not when you visit the doctor, because there's a metric asteriskton of Other Stuff that contributes to those potential problems apart from being tanned. *Actually that is something I would support, just without the nanny tax attached. Most health problems are very much stitch-in-time situations, catch them early and they'll be a tiny fraction of the long term cost, that's how the various breast/ prostate/ bowel/ melanoma screening programs work.

The trouble with things like the WHO report and the way it is being used here is that it is, effectively, third hand information. The papers are written by a bunch of people, collated and interpreted by WHO, then a journalist comes along and writes his article. You don't, really. What you have are a lot of people who don't believe that 'tax it!' is the answer to the problem, or that it is the last thing to try rather than the first. You have had plenty of 'positive' alternative suggestions, not just nitpicking at the tax aspects.

Quote from CDPR's blog: They really aren't hipsters, but they certainly are PR savvy- that's why using one of those vile extortion joints to counter piracy was rather an odd misjudgement. All the stuff they say is aimed specifically at appealing to or growing their target audience. I have no doubt they would, for example, happily charge for DLC if they felt it was in their best interest, they'd just go old school and call them 'expansions' to make it more palatable. Can't say I really care much about it, companies will PR, it's part of what they do. If it happens to improve my experience and meet with my expectations that's certainly better than something that's PR and doesn't improve my experience or meet expectations.

ctrl+F11 and ctrl+F12 should lower/raise cpu speed emulation in dosbox, I believe.