Zoraptor

GTA: San Andreas was highly educational and helped me learn a new language. I used to be an ignorant redneck cracka but now I'm down with the homeys, know what an OG is and can impress people by discussing Snoop Dogg and Ice Cube and their place in popularising the rap and hip hop oeuvre. Also very useful for watching that documentary series on urban and police life in Baltimore, without it I suspect I would have been trying to set the DVD language to english. So Rockstar games are not just over the top chav simulators, they're also culturally enriching.

By way of illustration, when Activision and Infinity Ward had their falling out the employees that took action were claiming more than a million (!) apiece in missed royalty payments- and that was without West and Zampella's separate action. I don't know how many of them were management as well (most, I'd suspect from observing corporate culture) but it's clear that working on a big title can result in pretty hefty remunerations if it's successful.

The alternative is a variation on the 'kettling' tactic, as the British police would call it. His big advantage is his set piece weapons, letting the rebels come into established kill zones is good tactics. He has retaken most of the strategically important places he's gone for in the past couple of months, though that is obviously somewhat self selecting. yep, it's all speculation, but so is the rebuttal for the most part. We cannot pretend to know the situation on the ground in any detail, but we have to presume that Assad would know CW use would be a red line as Obama said it explicitly- so any authorised use should be of enough significance to offset that. An attack on the Presidential Palace, the International Airport, cutting a vital supply line or encircling the enemy, something like that. And for the offensive uses the main advantage can only be gained by following up, hard. True, but the point is more that the inspectors were there and immediately available, not what day they arrived on. In either case, usage a day prior to or especially a day after them being there makes far more sense. My reasons for thinking it is relatively unimportant are mainly based on it being in rebel hands for a year. Under those circumstances I feel a case must be made for why it was important to use CW there, 'now', as opposed to when the inspectors were gone. That's the militarily logical way of doing things, in isolation, but not all the rebels are militarily logical. And from a PR POV it would destroy the rebels internationally if they made that scale of CW attack. I also make the judgement that the thing the rebels want more than anything, militarily, is direct intervention to level the playing field. Even well run militaries are not always as respectful of civilians as they could be, when there's an advantage at stake. It's a judgement call, yes, based upon the length the rebels have held it more than anything. I'd again come back to the military significance point though. Why there, and why then? Was it really that important? As I said there are circumstances where it's eminently believable, achieving a critical breakthrough or defending a critical area. As for the hazmat, their response would clearly be "we came under CW attack from the rebels", and I'm not convinced they would need hazmat that much- if you have air superiority and artillery plus tanks you could prevent most reinforcement until the gas has cleared, and issuing atropine or similar would not be conclusive against them given they've accused the rebels prior of using gas. But if you have control of the area you can remove incriminating evidence and plant obfuscating or framing evidence. That is allegedly what happened at several massacre sites, and this was a bit above a mere massacre both in scale and potential repercussions- and they would have known that. Again, that's mainly to do with the military advantage argument. You want something to offset the risks, if you're going to do something large and obvious which courts intervention it needs to have large rewards to balance it out- go the whole hog on something important, or just use the tips of the trotters so no one notices or gets too upset. Oh, you'd be surprised. I think the only substantive difference is that while I do find it most likely that regime forces used them given the current evidence I don't think it's conclusive, and would like something which deals with motive a bit more than the cartoonish "Assad is a thug, lol" that is largely being portrayed. I'm basically treating it as I would a trial, you're prosecutor and I'm defender so it's my job to promote alternative scenarios.

It really isn't a win win though, since he'd know he was courting intervention. In isolation it would be true but intervention would make losing near inevitable. It isn't so much that there isn't the possibility of people doing illogical things, it's that it isn't logical in any respect except to provoke a response. In isolation (again) logic would dictate that it is very likely- though not certain- that it was the government since they're the only ones who definitely have the capability, but it isn't in isolation and even if we accept that Assad may not be winning (or winning as quickly as he needs to) the surrounding circumstances are very odd, and consistently so. You want maximum plausible deniability, maximum stall factor, maximum effect with minimum direct evidence but 1) It happens on the day the inspectors arrive 2) It happens somewhere notable, but not really important, a Damascus suburb the rebels had already held for a year. 3) That suburb is convenient to where the inspectors are. 4) So just about anywhere and anywhen else would make more sense, it isn't important enough. 5) It's a large usage, but not as large as it could be and not a militarily significant deployment, specifically 5a) There's no proper follow up to the use. Prepare your troops, saturate the area, seize the ground in the chaos should be the process, but wasn't. 5b) If you seize the ground you also have a chance to clean up after yourself, if you're worried about repercussions. If the information from the alleged german intercepts is correct then Assad did not order any attack and turned down requests to use them previously as well, which would leave the possibility of a 'rogue' Syrian deployment as perhaps the most likely scenario since it explains the rather ad hoc nature of the use, though that would require rather looser control of the stockpiles than has been implied. It isn't conclusive either way no matter what France/ USA/UK, or Russia say. The rebels have captured a lot of stuff, and it's easy to believe that for example in a chaotic situation even supposedly highly protected gear could be lost, and that the most effective use of a moderate amount of captured CW would be to provoke intervention.

The sharing system sounds like it will be basically useless. Use someone else's account, but only when they aren't playing any game/ logged into steam? Where's the benefit over logging into someone else's account, downloading what you want then going offline (apart from the offline mode roulette, but even then nothing lost)? That's got far fewer restrictions. I find the linux thing particularly amusing- much as watching people who'll blithely rant about the sins of the grubby and benighted console peasant but beg for the ability, nay the privilege, of preordering a totally not console steambox- since Gabe is saying "closed platforms are bad" when he's running one himself. He's only bigging up linux because it lacks a central authority to gainsay him on that score; if he actually believed in open platforms he'd not be aggressively promoting his own, closed, one. Meh, same arguments as always. May have to resurrect the steam sux/rox thread.

I thought Dexter 1, 2 and 4 were pretty good, but it always looked to be something that would be inevitably overdone and last well past its sell by. Stopped watching part way through the Adama season. Little to no character development, and the antagonists who were the most interesting part (Doakes, RIP you magnificent bastard*; Lithgow) stopped making up for it. While not a wholly fair comparison it just does badly all the things that Breaking Bad does right. *Wish I could have written RIP, um, 'moneyfunsta!' as Harry Enfield might say, it's the most fitting epitaph for a character ever.

Person complains about slow/ crap internet, cue lots of oversized speedtest results. It's like some sort of law. Theoretically mine is 15Mb/s (well, it's a 4g modem but the tower hardware is HSDPA not 4g) synchronous so I'm reasonably well endowed at least for NZ, but speedtest never gets it above 8 even if in practical use it gets close to maximum when downloading. I did use to have fun posting my dial up stats with its unbelievably long 400ms+ ping time to win prize for worst internet.

Good luck doing that with what is basically a two foot (?) long rat. Even with Fallout (and Terry Prachett) extensively promoting the concept of rat as a tasty snack it'll be a hard sell... except for the name. I can see a big market for Nutria Bars/ Jerky as a healthy snack, the name just sounds so healthy. Not sure Nutria-On-A-Stick quite parses right though. (We can't even get people to eat rabbit, and they're both nice to eat and a noxious pest.)

I get discussing things you don't like. In many ways that is the essence of Criticism. I don't get playing games you don't like and know you don't like though, unless you're paid to. I've tried manfully to struggle through the tepid malaise that is Oblivion, but once I was convinced that it wasn't going to get better I just stopped. Having said that, one of the common rebuttals is "how can you say you don't like/ it's bad if you haven't played it (enough)?". To which the only sensible reply is "bro, I'm not going to waste my time playing something I don't like just to properly discuss a game on the internet", but all too often the Way of the Sky is taken and the game played extensively just so someone can comprehensively and authoritatively describe how much they hate it. And sometimes they stillget things so very, very wrong. Also, cricket is awesome. It's a metaphor for life, and speaks to the human soul.

Yeah, everything I've heard is that the DVDs of both the series and movie did well. It's never really clear whether that's relative (did well compared to viewership/ movie tickets) or absolute success though, and that's not what the numbers men look at when deciding renewal or sequels. I reckon that Firefly could have been successful, but probably not on Fox and certainly not the way it was handled there. Farscape and BSG did well enough to get multiple seasons and Farscape at least had a somewhat 'odd' premise (muppets!) as well. I realised fairly quickly that he's basically Avon from Blake's 7- perhaps my favourite character of all time! so not at all a bad thing- with a few more 'muscle' characteristics, much as Mal is basically Blake. They even used the premise of one b7 ep ('Orbit') as the background to a Jayne centric Firefly episode.

You managed to make me feel better about my miniscule data cap at least. (and that 4g satellite ain't. My 3.5G is faster than that by miles.)

There are a bunch of things that influence whether something does well at the box office beyond appeal and e-cred though. Internet buzz is definitely hit and miss, for every Blair Witch there's a Snakes on a Plane. The DVD sales and other media supposedly do very well, so it may be more that the people who like Firefly don't go out to movies much.

Friend Volo, you are leaving out the crucial factor there- they can handle two games at once (three now, I believe) if they are organised properly. It's the same for everyone, differing creative parts of the company come under pressure at different times in the dev cycle. If you have two games in development in similar stages you end up with the high demand times being nearly in sync as well and have to hire extra staff to cope with the spike, then lay them plus others off (or keep them at dollar costs) once the spike is passed. Not a good situation. Space them properly and you don't have to lay off, or hire, those artists as the demands fluctuate but are balanced as the two projects progress and you can keep the workflow at a reasonably steady rate. 5+ years to make a game is stupidly long. Being able to cope with that on a one off basis is not the issue, that that length of development time is wasteful and unnecessary- and that it then requires very high sales to make back the cash- is. Because if you take that long and don't sell well then you're in trouble, and a lot more trouble than if a 2-3 year dev time game sells equivalently poorly. And if the game sells well you get more money from the shorter time. FACT! r00fles!

Yeah, and so did Square Enix, Activision, 2k, Sega, Derp Silver, Bethesda, THQ, Infotari. Publishers gonna publish. I think what Allan is getting at mainly is that EA does bring positives as well as negatives. EA provided impetus to finally get DAO released, and the fault for it taking so long has to be Bioware's since they were independent for 80% of its development. DAO took so long that it nearly caught up with Mass Effect's schedule, which is bad for commercial reasons (potential overlap of sales/ publisher/ PR resources, concentration of revenue/ 'dead patches') and for production reasons (shared resources between ME/ DA teams coming under pressure at similar times, dlc scheduling). While it's possible to blame EA for not ordering more time for it there are very good reasons for it being that way- and a team producing a game every 5 years is not going to be commercially viable long term whether it's EA or independent Bioware. Also, many of the things people blame EA for are trends Bioware was following for ages. DLC can be traced back to the NWN premium modules, 'consolisation' to KOTOR, asset reuse to Mass Effect (1, and even on occasion prior to that).

Yeah, with statistics it's all about knowing the limitations of the statistics and the uses those statistics are put to. I have little doubt that the initial study here is flawed, but just about every statistical study is unless it's based on unimpeachable objective fact. Even statistics for reported and solved crimes don't qualify for this status since they're open to manipulation by police wanting to look better than they are and systematically under or over reporting or downgrading offences, may include both false complaints and genuine complaints that are withdrawn under direct or implied duress and a host of other factors. The only thing that can be done is to approach the question at hand as honestly as possible and to note potential sources of error and bias, something that any study with scientific pretensions ought to do. In this case you're dealing with two very large problems, human intentions and interpretations, and human memory. Even if you do take a good scientific approach there's still the risk of the media- or interested parties- embiggening the story for their own purposes. That doesn't really effect the validity of the statistics themselves though.

Yep. I presume the US version had an equivalent to Maddy Storin- intrepid girl reporter, well known gerontophile, mortal enemy gravity- as well as Francis U/ Frank U but the series has not arrived here yet and netflix has geoIP locking.

I really cannot see the US intervening now. I know they're still saying it, but it was a deeply unpopular proposition even prior to the current diplomatic initiative, and time will reduce both the impact of the chemical attack as a persuasion (that was months ago and we need to act now??) and the presence of an alternative 'soft' option will be attractive even to those that supported it but know their voters don't. At the beginning Obama may have believed that he could persuade people to action but that did not work even in the immediate aftermath, so there's little prospect of it working further down the line. He could still do it, unilaterally, but it would be political suicide and he'd be flushing the rest of his term down the toilet- and everyone, including the Russians and Syrians, knows it. I do think that the US got outmanoeuvred here. Russia seizing on Kerry's off the cuff suggestion allowed them to set the tone and pace of the discussion, we already have a 2 week delay come out of it. To keep control of the situation the US needed to do a 'proper' proposal with conditions set rather than a one sentence muse, as it happened the Russians and Syrians got in first so got to control the terms of the debate. I don't think the US administration will be entirely displeased even though it could have been handled better, since they must have been nervous at the prospect of intervention no matter what they said publicly, its only real negative is that it looks sloppy, for everything else it's just staus quo ante.

Steam takes 30% of the sale, which is why they should sell DD exclusively through Rockstar Social Club and keep 100% of the money for themselves!

I wish someone would butter my crumpets with flagrant abandon once in a while. Ah, yes. Truly tragic how she ended up, but the girl did have more daddy issues than a Bioware game so what can you really expect.

Sure that last one is a porcupine? Looks like a ring in from family Hedgehogidae to me.

I wish someone would butter my crumpets with flagrant abandon once in a while.

About the only thing that could explain the honey trap he fell for- who could have been Susan Boyle's sister- is if he only 'fell' for it, so you might be right.

Really? But everyone knows that Israel has nukes. It's more of a conspiracy theory to think they don't.

I'm really not sure that their stats/ approach are good. If you worded the question correctly you could have every drunken hook up in Newcastle/ Chicago/ Warsaw or wherever being 'rape', after all if you buy a woman a drink you're degrading her ability to make rational decisions, thus removing the ability for informed consent... and vice versa I guess.

I've pretty much come to the conclusion that Obama looks weak because he is weak. His natural instinct is to seek and build concensus rather than to decide stuff himself, and that approach is badly at odds with the (from the outside, highly disfunctional seeming) US political system which seems to reward people who do the political equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and shout "nyah nyah nyah can't hear you!". The really telling thing though is the troubles he's had selling his visions in this way even when he had majorities in both the senate (albeit not a supermajority) and house. This whole saga really illustrates that he just isn't very good at deciding stuff. He drew a red line then had to act when it was publicly broken. But it looks very bad because they're claiming that the red line had already been crossed multiple times, he doesn't have the backing he needs either from the public or lawmakers, his natural instinct was still to seek the warm protective blanket of Congress approval as legitimisation despite hinting that their decision would not be honoured, his team and his public announcements have been inconsistent in message and occasionally mutually incompatible and he's now ended up in a bail out option that certainly appears to have been an ad hoc solution prompted by one of his subordinates wandering (or wondering, even) off message again. Control of the issue has been handed to the Russians and Syrians on a platter, and he knows it. No number of deliberately inflammatory French draft resolutions will change that. In direct response to what Bruce asked, it is an approach that I like and I wish would be used more often, but with the proviso that there are obvious reasons why it isn't done that way. Politicians should seek the approval and consent of the people on significant issues rather than acting as an elective dictatorship. But the problem is that while Obama may have the best of intentions and want to check the democratic boxes the system he is operating in- and indeed, the system most politicians operate in- encourages and rewards intransigence; plus that approach is at odds with being an Executive who Draws Red Lines. They aren't really red lines if you're going to have to then ask permission from someone else to act on them. Syria won't fight Israel under pretty much any circumstances. They'd lose, badly, even if they weren't fighting a civil war as well, plus it would guarantee US intervention, even if you had a neo isolationist (Rand Paul? so practically unlikely) as President. You can make a nice parallel between Israel's 'theoretical' nuclear stockpile and Syria's 'theoretical' stockpile though-since they both exist for the same reason (if we look like losing a war we'll nuke Damascus/ if we look like losing a war we'll gas Tel Aviv), are both undeclared, both 'illegal', both never been used (r00fles!) etc.