Zoraptor

Nah, there's no room for moving on any of the serious ones you mentioned. You aren't going to get the PMs of Turkey or Sri Lanka stumbling into this forum and going "hmm, why didn't I think of this solution? Nobel Peace Prize nomination incoming for Walsingham!", even if they did stumble into the forum. Nothing anyone says here on any of those subjects has any point beyond the saying of it. You do it because you may believe in what you're saying, because you're a narcissist, because you want to know what other people's opinions are or because you want to be informed- or for a combination of all of them. You don't (or shouldn't) do it because you think you're going to change people's convictions/ opinions or actually solve anything, because you're exceedingly unlikely to do either. There's also the question of interest, those other issues don't tend to get discussed as much because there's simply less interest in them and their ramifications are a lot more local. You could always start a thread on the Tamils or Kurds (or general 'little discussed issues' thread) if you want. It's probably a good idea*, rather like the random video games news in GG. *I don't like megathreads much personally at least in theory, as they tend to cannibalise discussion from other threads, but in this case that seems unlikely.

Meh, that's an argument for never saying anything on the internet that isn't utterly trivial. There's no wool from eyes moment possible for any of the other issues listed either, anyone going in expecting such is going to be sorely, but unsurprisingly, disappointed. That isn't really the point anyway, the belief that you can change the world by posting on the internet is a charming one, but unrealistic. Frankly though, there was scope for a deal, it just got killed off by Yigal Amir and some moronic grandstanding during the ensuing election. If we went back 20 odd years people were saying that Northern Ireland was an unsolvable issue too, and while it isn't completely solved now it is certainly a lot better than it was.

Literally everyone knows that. The fundamental problem though is that it is the unelected faction negotiating, not the democratically elected one. That instantly makes the negotiations illegitimate. Nuh-uh, doesn't work that way. If, in the reverse position, the argument were made that all Israelis are squatters criticism of that position cannot then be defended by "but they're squatters!". That's a circular argument where the only defence of the premise is the premise itself, same as saying that integration would eliminate refugee problems because "they're not refugees, so not refugee problem!" as if the only problem is the label 'refugee'. Ah, but you're quite happy to lay those problems on other countries. People need food and accommodation and jobs wherever they are. I imagine that many would want to return to the homes Israel seized in 1948 or later, even if that is impractical now. For the rest, so far as I am concerned they can throw every illegal settler out of every illegal settlement for a palestinian. Equitable, considering the homes and land Israel has seized arbitrarily over the years. The thing is, with every single other refugee crisis in existence the general consensus is that the refugees should return home. Somalia, Afghanistan, Syria, Congo/ Rwanda etc, all places where the goal is to get the refugees home. But for the palestinians of course the rules change, they're different etc etc.

Authoritarian theocracies? Check. See themselves as protectors of (their branch of) Islam? Check. Mid level powers? Check. With ambitions? Check. Export their ideologies? Check. I could go through a very long list, but it's easier to list the differences. One is western backed, one isn't, one is sunni, one is shia. One is arab, the other persian. One is at least slightly more democratic than the other. There really isn't that much more, at a fundamental level. And when it comes to playing the Great Game- which is pretty much what they're both doing, just on a smaller scale from the historically big players- the methods used by all sides are similar. Turkey has become more assertive, but only really recently which has coincided with their tilting more towards islamism, prior to that you have to go back to Ottoman times. Saudi has had ambitions ever since they conquered the Hedjaz, as their possession of Mecca and Muhammad's homeland gives them massive prestige and (in their eyes at least) a far better Caliphatic claim than anyone else. They dominate entities like the Gulf Cooperation Council and Arab League due to their financial clout, and every oil producer fears them knocking the spigots out and dropping the price of oil. Their armed forces are pretty rubbish due to their inherent nepotism and rivalry (the air force and army nearly fought a war against each other in the 70s) but then Iran's armed forces aren't brilliant either. KSA has been arming rebels since near the beginning, most of the FN FALs the rebels got came from KSA stockpiles and that certainly started before Hezbollah got involved. They frequently buy from intermediaries to avoid unfortunate questions about their support for the more radical groups, as does everyone. Saudi has actually invaded (or intervened in, if you want to be charitable) two countries recently, Bahrain to prop up the sunni minority absolutist Khalifas and Yemen to attack shia rebels there even if you don't count things like Libya, Syria, Afghanistan as well. Well yeah, that's because Iran wants change in the region. Those with the power already (Saudi, US) don't want change if it has any chance of weakening their power. They also tend to define 'stability' as anything that benefits or strengthens them, and 'instability' as anything that benefits their enemy, Iran in this case. The Saudi/ Qatari/ Turkish intervention in Syria certainly decreased stability, as did the festering sore of the Iraqi invasion far more than anything Iran has done since 1979, indeed the other major destabilising factors were as a result of the (Saudi/ US instigated) Iraqi invasion of Iran in the '80s

Thou shalt not Nah-Nah-Naaah! at The Americans. It was the best new show of 2013.

r00fles!* But really, Saudi and Iran are opposite sides of the same coin in pretty much every respect- both support extremists, both have regional aims, proxies etc etc- and the situation is similar to that in the cold war where both sides try to get countries into their camp/ sphere (or just disrupt countries in the other's) using means fair or foul. Whatever criticisms can be levelled at Iran has to be seen through the prism of Saudi ambitions, and the Saudi brand of extremism and their will to support it has been far more disruptive to us than the Iranian, if only because there are a lot more Sunnis than Shia. Seriously though, I've never seen any evidence at all that Iran (or Saudi, for that matter; and when in power even the Taleban banned it) has profited from the heroin trade. A lot of it goes through Iran for sure, but then it mostly originates from Afghanistan which has a large western presence that for the past decade has itself been trying and failing to eradicate drugs production and smuggling with various means. *Changing country names in quotes? Using r00fles only semi ironically? What next? Using the like button?

I am going to play either Wizardry 6 or 7. Unfortunately I made the mistake of reading some character creation guides, always a foolish thing to do, which make it sound about as interesting as doing accounting. Otherwise, I'm earning the last few achievements I've missed from Dragon Age Origins. I have not the faintest idea why exactly, I usually just ignore the things and it's not like I need a character to import to DAI, which was the reason for replaying the Mass Effects. It has reminded me that I do rather like Awakenings though.

That article is just a tad over positive. The ones announced at the CES so far are a more expensive approx PS4 equivalent from CyberPowerPC (minus optical drive, doubleplus ugliness) and something that costs ~1800USD. Neither is particularly competitive either with consoles or with the pre-existing PC paradigm which can at least in theory be converted to a steam machine without buying a set option. When they come up with both a compelling reason to buy the hardware at all and a competitively priced offering then it will have earned the positivity.

I always thought Kensai/ Mage was the fromage du fromage of builds. Certainly it's the one I've seen cited most often for soloing.

Are any of them made by people who weren't bought out by Valve? And a lot of those seem to have caught the delay disease once their buy out titles were released.

It certainly wasn't an armed coup if Hamas won the election and Fatah illegally kept power, it was a... well, there isn't really a word for it. If the international community had honoured its commitments there would be no WB/ Gaza divide but they disliked the results, so set them aside for to favour their horse in the race. Accusations of 'selective stance taking' and the like are not in the least bit constructive either, since your 'selective stances' will tend to be anything said that you (or indeed I, if operating in reverse) disagree with. To illustrate, you, for example, ignore that half of Jordan's population is Palestinian refugees, you want them- a poor country with little in the way of resources- to basically "deal with it" and absorb them no matter what the practicalities are. I dare say if the US got 300 million refugees, or the UK 60 million they'd happily accept them... let alone Israel allowing them their right of return to and integration in their actual country. There is an argument that refugees should be integrated, but it's usually made by those far separated from the actual place expected to accept them and by those who do not have to deal with the problems associated with such a policy, and always seems to involve them being integrated somewhere 'over there', Not In My Back Yard.

I'd think it's more common than people believe, for older games there would simply be no way to know it was happening. But even such high budget and high profile titles as the GTA3s have been pulled- temporarily, in their case, and due to music licensing issues supposedly. Might be a bit less common going forward as there may be enough financial reward to buy perpetual licenses since DD means that even old games can still be offered for sale easily and financially viably, but if Marvel or Warners want to be able to offer 'clean' licenses for their properties every few years they'll still time limit them.

The belief that the Israeli right is not interested in peace is based on a tricksome thing called 'reality'. They have what they want already, any peace would require compromise and giving stuff up, which they don't want to do. You're also countering someone else's opinion based on your own opinion as if yours were generally accepted fact. Even your facts aren't actual facts. Hamas won the last Palestinian election which people like George Walker Bush and Condoleeza Rice described as fair (the day before the results were announced, of course) while strangely enough Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas has been able to get away with having zero elections since.

The GOG announcement for the free copies of 1,2,T specifically said that they were being removed 31/12 due to Interplay's rights expiring and that was republished fairly widely (eg RPS) including the note that would be removed and why. I'll freely admit that that doesn't make the technical definition of everyone, but it's about as good as you can get in terms of notice and minimising the impact. I cannot think of any other reasonable way they could publicise it.

Everyone knew that was coming due to the rights switch over- and at least everyone had a chance to get them free beforehand and they're still available if you did. More surprisingly they apparently should have been removed from steam as well as GOG, according to Pete Hines.

Well, when I saw Dark Post Apocalypse I did think 'yes, Garrett in a post apocalyptic version of his world would be great. What if the Trickster won?'. Post apocalyptic steampunk, basically, there ain't enough (any?) of it.

Americans had an oddly prosaic naming convention for many of their weapons. It took the Brits multiple tries to get naming tanks after generals to stick and most of the weapons they did name after designers or manufacturers were militantly unpoetic. "Browning Automatic Rifle" could hardly be closer to "Beige Infantry Support Weapon" if it tried. And the current trend towards horrible, horrible recursive acronyms... Though Russian and German weapons have the advantage of sounding exotic because they're foreign even when they are using generic type names. Panzerkampfwagon IV just sounds cool even if it only really means tank type IV to most practical purposes.

The AK is mechanically very different from the StG, which is the important part. They look quite similar due to the curved mag and wooden stock and they're both identifiable as 'modern' assault rifles but that's about where the similarities stop. It's like saying that the Panther was based on the T34 as it incorporated some of the ideas from the T34, such as sloping armour and a decent high velocity gun from the get go. But the Panther was a fundamentally different tank despite the apparent similarities, and still had far more in common with other german tanks than with the russian one it was 'based' on.

Did I miss something? There's an R4 (p)review of the AoD demo on Gamebanshee done by Eric 'sea' Schwarz which is in parts not so complimentary as the previous one he did two years ago. Some people on fair codexia agree with him, some do not. For some unspecified reason this is significant as opposed to the other 999/1000 times that people on the codex don't agree with each other. AoD is a fairly divisive game on the codex anyway, it has a lot of ardent defenders but it has snipers and detractors too. FOT's biggest failing wasn't that it was a JA2 clone, it was that it was a bad JA2 clone. Too few action points, too many enemies resulted in TB combat being exactly the turgid and stultifying affair that TTON's combat detractors fear, too many characters and too quick real time combat (plus the horrible switch between the two) meant that it was nearly impossible to use tactics properly in real time and you did need to use tactics.

Not really. If anything someone armed with an AK is far less cannon fodder than they were prior to the AK, indeed that is one of the main reasons Kalashnikov invented the thing, due to the experiences in the Great Patriotic War with unreliable and low firepower weapons. It's not like conscription or armies or training are new, all the AK did was make the average Joe with a few hours training at least theoretically comparable to a professional soldier in terms of firepower. If it were the AK41 instead of the AK47 there'd almost certainly be a lot less accusations of the Soviets treating their soldiers like cannon fodder because they'd have had the best personal weapon of the war by a mile, to illustrate the point. Cannon fodder is that whether it's armed with AKs, Brown Besses or pitchforks. Sure, if you gave them over engineered weapons they'd stop working quite quickly but the genius of the AK is that they won't. Which, if you're part of that cannon fodder is an exceptionally good thing, not bad.

If you have a conscript/ low skill army then you need a simple and easy to maintain weapon, hence as soon as automatic became important something like the AK was inevitable. If Kalashnikov hadn't done it someone else would have. The German's WW2 assault rifle type weapons had already pointed the way.

Yep, may as well criticise the inventor of the machete, or go back to those heartless bastards in China who invented gunpowder in the first place. All Kalashnikov did was make a very popular and reliable version of something that had been around for centuries; if they weren't using AKs they'd be using some other gun. Or sticks and stones, we're very good at improvising violence with whatever we have to hand.

The name is brilliant. "Kingdom Come: Deliverance- it'll make you squeal like a pig"! Best tagline since John Romero was at iD.

Don't know if anyone has a decent source for profitability of colonies, it seems to be one of the more difficult things to find decent analyses of. The colonies were nearly all loss makers post WW2- except those with extraordinary resources like oil- due to the US insisting on the disbanding of the preferential trade system but prior to that the only one I know of that made a definitive loss was India of all places. And that changed when they hit on the great idea of selling opium to China, and switched to being very profitable. Main thing is that colonies being drains is not borne out by the evidence- Britain and France were very wealthy throughout the colonial period up until at least WW1 and arguably WW2. Spain, despite having been bankrupt (ironically due to their colonies being too profitable) at one point and practically moribund for two centuries still had a huge empire/ colonies at the start of the 19th century, as did little old Portugal.

We have no way of knowing how well or not countries would have done without colonialism. It would depend on what (if anything) replaced it. But as I said, if colonialism were better balanced in terms of returns I'd swallow my moral objections, so I'm not absolutely opposed to the process, just its implementation and results. I would say with certainty that if there had been more emphasis on developing the colonies for the benefit of the people who lived in them as well as the coloniser they'd be in a better situation, else there's really not enough information to speculate.