Zoraptor

There are a metric asteriskload of war dead still unburied in Belgium, France and Turkey (eg you can barely go anywhere on the Gallipoli battlefields without finding/ seeing bones) yet somehow that is not a sign of the inhumanity of those countries- indeed many of the battlefields are regularly ploughed in Belgium and France. And the war dead from those battles was... half the total Russian war dead from WW2? if you include every single Empire, French and German casualty from every front? 25 million Russians dead in WW2, wasn't it? Over an area the size of the entirety of Western Europe plus a bit. I mean, I understand that the BBC Russian service has an axe to grind with respect to the British policy of demonising Russia, and they're concerned their money will be further cut if they don't follow it but if I see a line of trees in a depression, in an old battlefield I see a bunch of people who were sheltering from fire, and then provided nutrients for trees. I don't see some conspiracy of uncaring brutality just because it fits my preconceptions, something I'm very glad about. I'm a right cynic, but if there's one thing the Russians have always done well it is remembering their war dead even if it isn't always practical to honour them as we may try to. Still, very nice that they're getting buried. (Personally, I'd rather stay in the forest)

You left out the plagues of locusts, waves of pestilence and Justin Bieber/ Celine Dion duets from your Signs of the Apocalypse- plus the rather less apocalyptic talks which have been held. And no, you cannot spin them being the biggest arms purchaser into a weakness and Iran's lack of access into a strength. Thank goodness the Syrian rebels aren't being armed by the west, their self sufficiency is sure to carry the day against the arms the government is getting from Russia etc etc. I'd love to see some social progress and reforms in the ME, but that is not the stability that Saudi Arabia brings to the table. Especially now in the wake of the "Arab spring", which was viewed as dangerous instability (but opportunity) by their King, reinforcing his convictions even further as he helped topple Morsi (hope/ change!) Gaddafi (++hope/ change!!) and trying to do so to Assad (instability!!!, but still potentially hope/ change if only the Russkies and Assad would get with the program). That plus their continued reach toward Islamic extremists since, well, forever basically via funding/training/arming/indoctrination not just in the ME, their arming, massive petroleum market manipulation program via OPEC, involvement in the recent Syria conflict, UN impotency, and Saudi's ramp up in their toxic rhetoric such as saying they'd help the Israelis bomb Iran without any mandate. It again leaves me with the question of what kind of generally beneficial stability you envision here, unless you just wanted to make the obvious point that "stability isn't necessarily bad", or just looking for ways to diminish the issue because of some anti "persain" bias?

I'm not saying that every person in the SS Legions was bad, just that the legions themselves were. It's easy to say that they were not involved in war crimes- and it is, more or less, accurate to say so- but then they were commissioned well after most of the potential war crimes in their areas had already been committed, they tended to serve in their own regions after the German high tide mark so did not have the opportunities to do much (more) Random Russian Removal. If the Legions had been formed as the Germans arrived I have no doubt at all that they would have committed the same crimes the various ad hoc/ police/ collaborator/ militia groups- or German SS formations did- but they were formed far later, and largely from those groups. I'll happily concede that 'bad' organisations have some 'good' people in them. But, the presence of good people does not transform a bad organisation into good any more than the presence of bad people in a good organisation makes it bad. Frankly, the reason the Legions got special treatment after the war was Realpolitik. They were a convenient stick to beat the soviets with. Rather a lot of Germans got soft treatment from both sides for similar reasons.

Iran hasn't been building up, Saudi has for thirty odd years. Iran has very limited access to any advanced weaponry, Saudi has off-the-shelf access to very advanced stuff and has the highest buy in of any country on earth. Saudi (plus other gulf states) encouraged and financially supported Iraq's attack on Iran. It simply is not some one way road of Iranian attempted hegemony, build up and escalation. And saying that instability isn't necessarily bad is just plain common sense- the break of the USSR was monumentally unstable, but generally gets labelled as 'change' instead and a good thing, not a bad.

Lucas is not a good target anyway, he's actually been very good at letting people use his stuff on a not-for-profit basis, in contrast a lot of owners will try and block anything unauthorised whether it be fan fic or even just using the name or pictures on a website.

Playing Wizardry 6. Haven't actually died much except for two total party wipes right at the beginning, and rather stupidly walking off the top of a tower, but I'm getting the impression there's going to be a Road to Arnika moment when I realise that enemies are going to level scale my ass to kingdom come. Apart from that I have little to no idea what I'm doing at all apart from randomly opening and unlocking doors.

That isn't a terms of use issue. Sites in general do not grant unconnected 3rd parties any rights only themselves, which they may in some cases on sell; and that they effectively have to do to function. Twitter doesn't waive its customers' copy rights wholesale (as I understand it anything which does is on very sketchy legal ground), only in a limited way.

You certainly lose certain rights when you put personal data on the web. Technically, you or I could (try to) assert copyright over our posts here and then demand royalties or their removal- except the terms of use waive those rights and simply writing on a public forum implies waiving of those rights anyway. For things like Facebook or Google there should be an acceptance that they are 'free', but need to make money somehow (facebook_piggies.jpg). They're voluntary services which people willingly give a lot of information, if their Terms of Use allow for sharing of information with 3rd parties or select partners then they will, that isn't significantly different from "uncheck this box if you don't want..." fields in just about any commercial sign up process, or loyalty cards for a supermarket or other retailer. In both cases they tend towards shifting the goalposts to disadvantage you. Personally, I get around Googleist monitoring by having a dynamic IP, Noscript/ adblock and cookies allowed on a case by case basis. But then, I'm special and know that those lovely Doubleclick ad banners report straight back to the mothership...

It's pretty consistent with what I think about a range of things, really. I despise the support of Pinochet and the defence of his repressive and murderous ways as being a 'lesser evil' too, for example. The Baltic SS Legions were SS, they fought for Hitler and Germany and were complicit in massive war crimes, even if the most massive ones were usually committed in previous roles- that's a fact. I have no doubt that some Balts fought bravely and honourably for their country, and justified their collaboration as such, but then I have no doubt that some Germans, even some in SS units, fought bravely and honourably too. You can say that about any group with a bad reputation, as mitigation of their badness it is utterly trivial. Truth is that the Baltic SS Legions were made up largely of the sorts who had been previously helping to liquify the Balt's Jewish problems- the collaborationist police units and, indeed, Arajs' goons in the case of Lithuania. I don't have any interest in some sort of nationalist or persecutionist justification of that any more than I have for the Ustasi in Croatia (indeed, the Croats also had a lot of anti-fascists), I'm afraid. Yeah man, like totally different.

Oh dear, I actually meant to change that line and only got half way through it. It was originally "you" instead of "anyone" but I decided that was an unfair wording and was going to change it to "anyone who believes otherwise". I don't think it's a particularly hard argument to make in a vacuum, it's just a subjective argument since it's dependent on how people weight a whole lot of factors.

Yeah, most answers are political type ones, though not without reason. I know perfectly well that it is difficult if not impossible to convince anyone that Iran and Saudi are opposite sides of the same coin. But, as much as it is up to me to 'prove' their similarities and the significance of them, it is also up to the counter arguers to prove their dissimilarities and their importance since there isn't really a default position. Mainly though, I don't see stability as being an aim and a benefit in and of itself. I tend to see it more in terms of 'change' and 'default' rather than in/stability. If change is needed then instability is not necessarily a bad thing. Change is needed in the Middle East so instability is not necessarily bad- except neither of the big regional powers is particularly 'nice'. Also Saudi is now the US's biggest arms customer, iirc, and has been one of the largest for decades. So it isn't just Iran uparming, and Saudi's arms are at least theoretically (though the Saudi armed forces are reputably terrible quality wise, and riven with nepotism and corruption) far superior to Iran's.

Any Latvian or Estonian or Lithuanian who fought for the Germans thinking they were getting a 'free' country from the deal was a moron of the first order. I'd suspect that rather more were the types that decided the arrival of the Germans was a good time for pogroming the local jews and anyone else suspected of being vaguely Bolshie, things that have tended to get rather swept under the carpet of history as incovenient. Genuine 'freedom fighters' (always a rofltastic term; especially given some of the Balts current apartheidist policies show how much they're really interested in 'freedom') were asterisked from the get go. And Oby bro, that's a KV-2, not a wunderwaffe.

Don't worry about being rude, I'm a big boy and since at heart I don't expect to change anything it is also very hard work to get me to take something personally. End of story is that if, say, the PM of Sri Lanka were the type of person who'd read an online post (in english, on an english forum for computer games and all the rest of the stuff that makes the possibility vanishingly remote) you will not change his mind on Sinhala absolutism, triumphalism and political repression because if he was that sort of person there would not be a problem in the first place. If he's happy to ignore what India and other large countries and significant players say he'll blithely ignore anything else too. You may be a unique snowflake, we all are, but we're a unique snowflake in a massive drift of other unique snowflakes. Liberal democracy is a made up term. It's basically "democracy that gives results I/ the 'international community' like". There were free and fair elections- per GWB etc- and the 'wrong' party won, that's all. Nah, the PA lost all legitimacy it had the moment it set aside an inconvenient election result. Hamas won, they lost, they tried to retain power. End of Story. rofls. Yeah, those who live in a prison have it easy! They have tvs and get fed, get to work, wow it's almost like a holiday camp! Except of course they do everything at the sufferance of the prison guards. Israel can and do arbitrarily seize land, detain people, force them to live in a series of discrete cells, divide communities and separate them from their land and generally retain the ability and desire to asterisk them up whenever and wherever it's convenient- eg flagrantly refusing to allow building consents in areas they consider Palestinians 'undesirable', even if they own the land. The current peace plan is barely comparable to the Rabin one in the first place and Israel has not the slightest intention of giving stuff up but rather delights in being deliberately antagonistic, hence the constant announcements of yet another new settlement increase every time someone so much as mentions peace.

I'd take issue with some of those criticisms, though I think the heart of them is fair enough- Moffat's tenure has been a mass of good (theoretical) ideas with jumbled execution coupled to an almost Lucas like attraction for ideas whose main reason for existence is to be 'cool', even if they make no sense. Dr Song is not immune to that. But, the show is Dr Who, not Dr Song. Yeah, we see Captain Jack trying to pick up anything with a pulse, but we don't need to see River do it. Nor do we really need more non 'heteronormative' relationships given Jack and the xeno lesbians are more than most shows ever have. All companions orbit the doctor, he is the title character. If it's Torchwood or SJA then they do not orbit the doctor since it's their show (even if he is a significant, unseen inspiration). Without a rewatch I'd be straining to be sure but my presumption was that River was hoping the Tennant doctor was actually a later incarnation, and she was hoping she'd still be relevant to him- in fact that's the only explanation that makes any sense given she's been in a linear timeline wrt to the Smith Doctor incarnation. Given the events in the xmas special we can understand why she'd hope for it, too. But but, given that she was his wife you would expect it to be Alex Kingston showing up in the Xmas special rather than (or in addition to) Kieron Gillen, even if showing Amy did have the advantage of being a closed circle and avoiding the maudlin morass of Tennant's finale's end scenes. Overall he's really critiquing Moffat rather than the treatment of any specific character.

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.