Zoraptor

It won't be a bidding war since we really ought to pool our resources instead of bidding against each other, $105 will, after all, get the rights and maybe an hour of development time. Plus it's a tender process, so I've already lost. I'm not sure that Prosper's talents are best suited for Independence War, if I ever end up with the rights to Call of Cthulhu (which I think would require Lovecraft to come back to life and reset the copyright period) he'd be a shoe in though.

When it comes down to it it is probably because the Taleban was one of the (few) absolutely raging successes that the ISI has ever had- and are to a large extent linked to AlQ. They were sponsored by and originated in (refugee camps in) Pakistan and took over most of Afghanistan very rapidly. Given that Afghanistan had a lot of competing interests in it even in the 90s- Iran in the west, the various ex soviet 'stans and Russia in the north and Pakistan itself in the east getting their proxy to the pinnacle so rapidly and near completely was quite an achievement. It'd also deflect and defuse some of their internal problems with extremists if they were sponsoring the Afghan Taleban and not so actively antagonistic to AlQ since they can just send them off into Afghanistan rather than have them make trouble in Pakistan itself. Basically the Pakistanis know that the west will not be in Afghanistan indefinitely and want to hold onto influence with their old trumps.

Yep, for anything non windows it's a better deal by far. For windows though, it isn't great. I was referring to this from 2008- which basically was Atari stringing Obsidz along for a year with the promise of making BG3, albeit with only one side of the story being available.

There are very few Zoroastrians still in Iran. Iran helping AlQ in anything other than an enemy-of-my-enemy sense is ridiculous though. They might let ObL through their territory either deliberately or through some officials being bribed, but they're fighting AlQ offshoots (supported by the US, another enemy of enemy situation) both in a low grade insurgency in their own country and in Iraq/ Syria. And everyone knew Syria had WMDs, the only confirmed usage so far by independent sources- rather than USKFR sources that just happened to appear once the rebels started losing and they wanted to arm their AlQ affiliated proxies totally not AlQ affiliated proxies against Iran's proxies- is the rebels, some of whom have form for it (see Bani Walid). Pakistani officials being two faced, incompetent and corrupt plus far more concerned with India than with islamic extremists should surprise no one- and I doubt any Pakistanis would be even slightly surprised.

Yeah. I'm not a fan, and wouldn't recommend BGEE as a purchase to any windows user as you can get a better enhanced experience for cheaper from the base game, but some do rather treat it as if the grave of BG has been exhumed and the corpse given some, uh, not so tender loving. Despite not being a fan by any stretch in a battle of Trent Oster vs the receivers of zombieAtari it's Oster who'd get the support every time. Atari has been an utterly dreadful company (remember them stringing Obsidz along with a potential BG3, anyone?) recently even without the extra bonus of having receivers trying to maximise worth for creditors. PS Atari receivers, I'll buy the Independence War IP for $50, get back to me.

Astronomers detecting huge mysterious bursts of radio waves from outside the galaxy? Reapers confirmed.

There's also Hillsborough. I believe some of those responsible for it- and the utterly despicable ass covering smear campaign against the victims- not only still have their jobs, but have promotions.

No surprise there, even his name is great.

You could pay a whole extra $20 (?) to get the expansion as part of the kickstarter, so it's not exactly been sprung on people. Though it needs the fulfilment/ redemption method(s) to be up and running to actually, well, redeem it. There's also been a fair bit of talk about whether or not any sequel to PE would use KS, which was a pretty strong indicator it would be a 'franchise'.

The primary problem with police is their tendency to defend the bad apples. Expecting there to be no bad apples is unrealistic but in a (more) ideal world police would report corruption, brutality, evidence fabrication etc themselves. In practise the tendency is to close ranks and defend anything done by the police simply because it is done by the police, which ironically is exactly the sort of thing police condemn strongly in domestic violence or gang cases. I have no doubt that most police in most places are absolutely fine, it's the bad apples- and especially the tendency for even the good apples to protect the bad ones- that is the problem. A policeman who was instrumental in an absolute frame up (of Arthur Allan Thomas) was described as having "integrity beyond reproach" by the deputy commissioner here (our #2 cop, basically) and got a full police funeral. And that for someone who was bent as a paper clip.

Are there no patriotic American blokes willing to don posing pouches in celebration of freedom?

I'm less than convinced that the PS4 will be some sort of revolutionary system in terms of performance. It'll be better than the on3 pretty much inevitably since the on3's components are worse and PS4 will cost less, but things like improvements in development time are in comparison to the- frankly- dreadful and overcomplicated PS3/Cell system, not in comparison to competitors. And having access to unified memory will have a limited effect as that does not improve the underlying horsepower, which is decent enough and better than the on3, but, well it's already substantially worse than PC options, albeit currently quite expensive PC options. But, if I were looking at getting a next gen console there would be only one option and it wouldn't be the One Mind you, given the similarities to PC I can see Sony doing a bit more of the timed exclusive then release on PC, potentially. Cell made that a difficult proposition for PS3 era games but given it's AMD/ AMD now it would be practical- if they wanted to. Is much more is known of the technical aspects beyond the supposed 3/5 GB split in the on3 for the win8/ gaming OS's, given neither is released yet? I don't think Sony has said anything about how it's handling such things, yet. Otherwise there's the basic DDR3 vs DDR5 difference and latency vs bandwidth advantage issues, but that's a well known difference.

Is getting chopped into sausage by Goths natural causes or being murdered? Actually it's amazing how few Roman emperors got killed in battle, Valens was the only one I was sure of that wouldn't be being murdered by his own troops, or executed after losing. Which I guess kind of proves the point.

Hey, don't they have another kickstarter running? Oh wait, that finished a couple of days ago didn't it. Good thing they only worked out they were over time and over budget on their previous kickstarter after it ended, else they might not have got so much...

Saving my monies for the kickstarter. Moscow Symphony Orchestra stretch goal here I come. With that and Larian Belgium may become famous for more than waffles, eurocrats and the worst variant of the Brassica genus known to man. What sort of warped mind sees lots of little cabbages attached to a stalk and thinks "hey, awesome"- the sort of minds that make good games it appears...

Heh, Word point blank refused to alter some formatting for me. I ended up with about six horizontal rules at the end of the document- where they'd come from I don't know but they were undeletable by any standard means. It'd jump images around seemingly randomly, couldn't hold a style to save its life and I loathed every second I used it. Plus Ribbon, typically MS solution to a non existent problem. CS and OO 4 lyfe!

Lots of things with driving in on PC have it, at least as an option. GTA3+ for example. I found M&KB better by far in VC for car control, as I also played that on PS2 so have a direct controller based comparison, but I'd suspect that I may be in the minority there so far as driving goes- mouse precision vs autoaim on the other hand is an absolute walkover.

Don't blame me, I voted Ron Paul? (might have been interesting to see if he'd actually stuck to principles if he'd won, but that was never going to happen anyway)

You cannot invalidate a 2 dimensional oversimplification with another 2d oversimplification. Complex buffered systems are resistant to change, certainly, but the tendency is towards 'defaultism'- difficult to change, but equally difficult to change back- not some magic median. That is why you end up with 'Ice Ages' and warm periods, not Ice years/ Warm years, the 'default' position of the system shifts markedly for a period of thousands of years.

I've been playing the Wing Commander series from start to finish, up to the SOs for Prophecy now so nearly finished. Had immense fun with it so I'll almost certainly move on to IWar 1/2 next, or possibly Privateer. Ratings, story wise: 4>3>2=Prophecy>1 Ratings, gameplay wise: Prophecy>3>2>4=1 All worthwhile though, even 1 for fair dinkum Ocker Hunter who was obviously written by someone with a Steve Irwin overdose (and Angel, who actually looks better than her live action 3 version) and 2 for manic depressive french maori Doomsday. WC4 still has the weird inverted difficulty curve where the early missions in hellcats and longbows are far more difficult than the last missions in a Dragon, let alone anything using a BWU ship and missiles are instakills most of the time.

Not really, no. Depends entirely on your preference, as you point. It's not a fact that a controller is better. A controller has clear advantages that translate directly to a racer: 1) Analog steering, allowing you to steer more or less depending on how far you move the thumbstick. With a keyboard it's all or nothing. 2) Analog triggers, allowing you to feather the throttle. Again, with a keyboard it's all or nothing. It is mouse and keyboard that is being compared to, right? Not keyboard only? Because it strikes me that those limitations do not apply to mouse control where you can use distance and speed of mouse movement as an 'analog(ue)' input method, you don't have to use the binary keyboard input. M&KB is not the greatest combo for everything of course, I don't think you could play SSX very well with M&KB, and most flight/ space sims wouldn't work well either. But, of course, space sims don't work well with a controller either.

That sucks major balls. I feel sorry for everyone who bought that game. I think the fundamental question must be asked: if a bad game stops working should you feel sorry for a purchaser from the point at which they bought the game or the point at which it stopped working? Indeed, is the lack of working actually a net positive as it will prevent anyone accidentally replaying it? Hmm. This needs some pondering.

Guaranteeing something that you can not actually guarantee is foolish, even if it does make for good rhetoric. The burden of proof should always be on the person who makes the claim*, as is the case with ravenshrike and his "guaran****ingtee that no liberal org had to answer anything remotely intrusive as them". If that statement was not intended to be a factual statement, that should be clarified. *Imagine what science would be like, if any yahoo could claim any outrageous thing without having to provide any evidence whatsoever. I'll agree that others should be able to prove it right or wrong, but the person who makes the claim should have more proof than "liberal orgs weren't bitching" to support their case. Oh, I agree. This is the internet though, and this is a political thread, not a scientific discussion. A certain amount of rhetoric is... inevitable.

Then guaranteeing it seems a bit foolish doesn't it? Well no, it's eminently sensible in a rhetorical sense. In effect you never have to provide evidence because the statement is constructed so you cannot provide it and means that the onus of proof is moved to the other person.

Prove it then. With evidence from reputable sources and not politically biased blogs. Can't prove a negative. ACORN probably proves a positive, though I suspect that will be Different. I wasn't specifically saying that he had any involvement in the IRS thing, just that it could be seen as part of a pattern. The trouble is that at some point in the political cycle the burden of proof on such things almost always reverses- once there's a sufficient critical mass of problems and the perception of problems it becomes in effect necessary to prove innocence rather than lack of guilt. People just plain stop believing you even if you're telling the truth, in other words. That's a very subjective thing of course, and the threshold will vary markedly from person to person but I've generally noted a decreased tendency to defend Obama in the past few months.