Zoraptor

Well, Zimmerman apparently thought it was "****ing cold" yet took far longer than necessary to walk to his supposed end point and back, despite the weather- so much so that Martin could cover ~three times the distance at a "slow jog", in ~30 seconds, then walk most of that distance back after talking "a few minutes" just in time to- coincidentally, no doubt- find Zimmerman who had not managed to get back to his car in that time but had actually walked around a third of that distance from his 'end point' (E) towards Martin (F on the map; and away from his car). The link says that Martin covered around 5 times Zimmerman's distance, at either a walk of slow jog, and waited 'a few minutes' talking to his girlfriend yet Zimmerman had moved only around, what, 10 yards? since supposedly stopping his pursuit at roughly the point Martin arrived home, and ending his police call around half way through that 'few minutes' Martin was talking to his girlfriend. So, what was Zimmerman doing for the time it took Martin to talk for x seconds and walk all the way back to where he met Zimmerman? Enjoying the ****ing cold? There's simply no way Zimmerman went back to his vehicle directly or in any timely manner, based on the timings from that link. So, not exactly difficult to knock holes in the narrative- well, except legally, if the guy refuses to take the stand- just impossible to prove any alternative.

Dunno. Why did it take Zimmerman 4 minutes to get back to his car if all he did was walk, what, 30/ 50/ 100 yards, then back? That's one very pedestrian pedestrian, enjoying a quiet ramble on a wet and windy (and asterisking cold, apparently) night. Zimmerman may not have to prove his version correct, just plausible, but that also does not make what he says actual fact. And we have Zimmerman's word that he followed Martin somewhat since he admitted it (hence the whole "we don't need you to do that" from the dispatcher), the only point of contention is how much he followed; and his girlfriend's testimony supports that he at least felt he was still being followed/ thought Zimmerman was "creepy".

People can read, you're just telling a story of one way it may have happened, which is actually all Zimmerman had to do as well. There's nothing even slightly definitive about Zimmerman's overall story being true and there are plenty of ways that are either perfectly reasonable with respect to Martin or aren't flattering to Zimmerman about how they could have ended near his car- Martin deciding to go back and get his licence plate after being stalked by a creepy older male, parked up in his truck, watching him from the darkness, getting out and following him- for example- or Zimmerman being less than truthful about any extra provocation being given or who initiated the physical confrontation. Since Martin is dead and without any directly contradicting evidence being apparent the jury has to accept Zimmerman's version, but that doesn't make it true, only not disprovable.

"They were young, and needed a publisher..."

That is why it had to be not guilty, but it is also why it's a deplorable situation. Of the two people who knew the truth one was dead, shot by the other; and that fact was potentially decisive for the defence- though of course Martin might have confirmed Zimmerman's story, for all we know. The prosecution had to show that Zimmerman was not acting in self defence and was lying when the only (surviving) witness was Zimmerman himself, who (sensibly) did not testify so could not be cross examined. That is not a good situation at all as it makes it advantageous to kill the other guy. It's one of the few situations in which I'd be somewhat sympathetic to forcing a defendant to testify- in most places self defence has to be proven, and in that sort of situation Zimmerman would almost certainly testify voluntarily. With the burden of proof provisions differing significantly Zimmerman ends up with both the advantage of not having to testify and not having the other guy involved alive to gainsay him. If Martin stood up and said that Zimmerman jumped out at him so he tackled him, banging his head on the ground then it's two plausible stories of self defence against each other and it reverts to an armed guy getting out of a car to follow a 17 year old incorrectly and without foundation suspected of being a burglar (and who wasn't even trespassing, just staying with relatives) against a police suggestion. At that point, things start looking bad for Zimmerman.

I thought he would be found not guilty as soon as I read through a summary of the Stand Your Ground law (and I couldn't agree more how fundamentally stupid that law is) and it was probably the correct decision from the evidence and what little I saw of the trial. But it's a disturbing situation where someone can follow an innocent, unarmed person and get the benefit of the doubt- effectively- because that person is dead and cannot refute anything said about either them and their conduct, or the situation as a whole. I'm also less than convinced that had Martin wrestled the gun off Zimmerman and shot him that the police would either have taken so long to charge or that the groups that supported Zimmerman would have supported Martin, despite that being at least as much Stand Your Ground (probably more, really) as what actually happened. I also tend to wonder what the result might have been had Zimmerman been carrying and stabbed Martin with a knife, rather than a gun, as much of the political heat about guns specifically would have been removed.

"Director of business development for steam and steamworks" so probably not responsible for the programming, but probably was for the implementation/ targeting and the like. I'm not sure steam will even now win any awards for being well programmed, he was there for 8 years so he was likely (albeit I presume) responsible for the entire 3rd party bundling approach- which I cordially loathe, but has been massively successful at making Valve the arbiter of PC gaming.

Oh yeah, MoO is Infotari, isn't it? I guess someone might buy the IP from them, then we might finally get a third game in the series!

I'm not sure that bitterness really plays into anything negative, just how much is said publicly and any slant. It'd be worse if someone brought in to spearhead a new project simply didn't care or was incompetent, and neither of those seem to be the case. She just seems to be genuinely disappointed at the (perceived) lack of support/ active blocking. The situation was clearly pretty bad/ weird though, as the guy responsible for steam business development got the chop as well, and he was responsible for something even I would unreservedly say has been hugely successful- even if I fundamentally dislike its direction and effect.

There seems to be some stuff going down between Saudi and Qatar as well- the Saudi candidate won in the FSA/ SNC and the Saudis immediately supported the coup in Egypt while Qatar (more friendly with the Brotherhood) has been... tepid. In both cases the displaced groups/ candidates largely supported by Qatar, and in the case of Egypt it's one they've historically been antagonistic towards. Saudi has always seen themselves as champions of the islamic and arab cause, and dislike anyone challenging that. I suspect that their recent changes have a lot more to do with putting that upstart Qatar with their World Cups and annoyingly assertive foreign policy in their place than any Road to Damascus enlightened change of thinking on Saudi's part.

It's unsurprising that Valve's theoretical structure would not work in practice as nicely as it sounds on paper. It's got the same basic problem as communism, parts of it ignore that people are people and are not always 'nice' about things, and won't always do the objectively right thing. Most communist parties were theoretically non hierarchical with flat management structures as well. And it is a company that is pretty much only producing actual games since 2007(?) by buying up external studios, if it weren't for steam they'd probably have had to alter their structure by now for being unproductive. I'd suspect the reason she got the tech rights was because she was obviously going to be stroppy rather than quiet, and it would make better PR usage of a product Valve had no more interest in.

I actually expected them to be made and distributed by EA as Fargo already has a relationship with them and they do similar things for other companies. Really though, it shouldn't matter who fabricates the boxes if they have no say in how the game gets made, and it certainly isn't the same situation as having a publisher who's basically your boss, in this situation it ought to be the other way around really, Derp Silver should do what InXile tells them to so far as boxed copies go.

There were- as always- people going slightly over the top in response, along the 'kill yourself plz'/ 'get cancer and die' variety to outright threats of personal violence. OK, we all know that 99% of such threats are just some anonymous moron blowing off steam on the internet, but it's easy to say that as someone it wasn't aimed at. The company's promotion of the prank call contributed to the extent and intensity of backlash once it all went sour, and it all happened on their time and ultimately it is at least partially their responsibility. If prank calls had been against station policy or they hadn't promoted the call it would be open and shut, as it is though neither was the case. But as I said, I don't personally have much sympathy for her, unless they were ordered to make the call. As much as the company promoted it a lot the DJs were hardly shrinking violets either. It's certainly a far different situation sympathy wise than someone falling off some scaffolding because it was old, poorly maintained and the company knew about it but ignored it, which is what such legislation is really aimed at.

Autocorrect amuses me, and gives Spike TV ideas for its low budget infotainment shows.

Volga Bulgarians are culture group Mongol. I checked in CK2(+). So that's the definitive answer.

The company also promoted the call extensively when it was just a Haha So Classic hoax call and were happy to grab all the publicity at that time. That certainly contributed significantly to the problems once there was blowback. I don't have much sympathy for her though, the hoax call was moronic even before it was tragic- but I equally have little sympathy for a company that was happy to take the credit and publicise to the four winds when it was still 'funny' then trotted out the DJs to carry the can when it suddenly wasn't.

You can still have a thief or mage taken out by a single missile crit hit when they're level 2, quite easily. Fortunately the game is not designed around having hordes of low hp, low xp, high relative danger missile wielding enemies like kobolds (some with Extra Fire Power, ohoho) throughout much of the early game and in the first critical mission set, as that would be criminally bad given the rule set used since effectively 5% of all attacks against a mage and even a non maxed thief will kill them stone cold dead with a single hit, let alone that mages need 2500xp to even go up that first level. Every time someone complains about Bioware's encounter design going down the toilet and how things were better in the BG series I think back to the Nashkel Mines and wonder if said person actually played the BG series. I'm not much of a fan of ME2 style plinkamole combat but it could be and occasionally was so much worse.

But V for Vendetta was the best movie of all time! Of all time! I hear it even had a comic strip spin off it was so great. How else will I feel like a badass anarchist vigilante while sitting behind my computer in comfortable middle class splendour, hmm?

Meh, every time I see SR3 I wonder how I missed the Space Rangers 3 release. Damn acronyms. I wouldn't count on it unfortunately. Why not? Borked codebase that barely works on consoles and that would require major reworking, supposedly.

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.