Zoraptor

Funny, I never liked the Troika engines- except the Fallout one, if you count that. They always felt like they were five years older than they actually were. Having replayed the IE games recently (and still chugging through IWD2) I've come to a bit of an appreciation of the advantages of 3d, things like enemies sitting in the 'shadow' of doors so that you cannot attack them unless it's them alone but only open/close the door when in a 3d engine you'd just rotate the camera, and having to loot stuff by scrolling laboriously from middle to bottom corner of screen and click on each 2GP loot pile instead of having the loot dialogue free float come to mind.

In the books there was at least an exotic connection, iirc. Her mother (grandmother?) was a foreigner or gypsy/ mystic type. Don't really know why they didn't use the book set up with the Westerlings, as it actually makes Tywin look even more clever. Also no "Jaime Lannister sends his regards?"

That view is predicated on the west trying to subvert the Arab Spring- it didn't look good that the first two AS countries were western proxies, and that Bahrain's autocratic monarchy was only propped up by considerable British surveillance tech and weaponry as well as an invasion by thousands of Saudi soldiers. Thus you aid the uprisings against the leaders you don't like because it's convenient, it's become doable both politically and practically, and as an added bonus it distracts from the inconvenient examples. I don't really subscribe to it either except with regards to Libya, and even there it was more complicated and involved a lot of stuff like Sarkozy wanting to be all France Strong! for the upcoming election and distract from internal problems. Certainly the US/ west had no reason to topple the Hoz or Ben Ali, they just weren't worth supporting in the fashion that would have been required for them to remain in power. Syria was always more of a Sunni Gulf State project to try and reduce Iran's power and influence since they'd gained (albeit a much weakened) Iraq. If they'd got a no fly zone through it may have been different, but that was pretty much never going to happen. The only americans really supporting the rebels are John "Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran" McCain and some PNAC types eager to be remembered in such glowing terms as Wolfowicz, Rumsfeld, Perl et al by asterisking up another country as badly as they did Iraq. And even they'd hesitate to actually fight the Russians, which is pretty much what it would take since they're even sending their aircraft carrier into the Med, as well as the S300s and MiGs.

"640k is all you'll ever need!": Hiro Protagonist Bill Gates Though I do have to say that improved graphics not being matched by improved gameplay/ AI etc is one of my major peeves with the state of gaming. Especially since a lot of stuff actually goes backwards in that regard. I can kind of justify an AI acting like a pithed frog in a game that looks like DOOM or even System Shock 2, not so much in something more modern.

I dunno. Given the rumours about Bethesda's conduct not getting involved may be a bullet dodged.

You could view both in reverse as well. How is the west supplying weapons to the rebels going to calm the situation and how can the rebels pay for it? First you make sure that the side you support wins, then the bills can be settled.

At that point probably not, but that was 3 years into the war. If they'd taken Washington prior to that they probably would have 'won' , and they had a couple of chances to do exactly that- Gettysburg, if Stuart hadn't disappeared off on a vanity trip or if Longstreet's alternative plan were used and very early, immediately after 1st Bull Run, when the Union army pretty much dissolved itself and left Washington with minimal defences. Alternative history though, who knows if it actually would have happened that way.

Not really unexpected news. Initially I thought he was going to be a terrible choice, but he's probably ended up being #2 on my favs. Lol, 11th Doctor??? BBC news where r ur fact checkers????

I'd actually suspect that most people on the internet only really care about their own opinions, not other people's. That's both human nature/ why people have opinions in the first place (ie they aren't likely to have opinions they consider wrong because, well..) and the reason why there is very seldom any conversion of opinion from one side to the other. I don't really care about the other side of the argument in this case as I know there's no chance of me being convinced by Bruce or anyone else that banning symbols is a good idea, because so far as I am concerned it just fundamentally isn't. Even if every single person here disagreed I wouldn't be convinced. That doesn't mean that counter opinions are worthless- though they may be in some circumstances- they can give new information and an idea why people think as they do, and you don't have to 'hate' someone just because their opinion differs andor you don't care about their opinion.

Been playing a bit of Victoria II. Currently Glorious Russian Empire has liberated the 2nd Rome (turning the Black Sea into a Russian lake without so much as a peep from the Brits/ French, silly Otto refusing their mediation in the Balkans) and protected a big chunk of Africa from colonial exploitation under my socialist/liberal cloak of beneficence. I have the highest culture and industry scores, but near lowest military score (!) of any of all the great powers. Previously played as Egypt and formed the Arab Union, ended up 2nd behind the US who did nothing but sit back and accept immigrants all game while I (with help from Glorious Russia and Bro Italy) formed democratic bulwark against the depredations of Fascist Germany and the People's Commonwealth of Decidedly Average Britain. Ended the game being paid 32k/day by Germany in war reparations, I'm sure levying them on Germany would never have negative consequences down the line.

There are two different (and significantly so) concepts there though. I'd strongly disagree with banning symbols but equally strongly disagree with banning dissent on the use of those symbols inappropriately. Most people who'd actually want to walk down the street wearing/ carrying swastikas are pathetic individuals whose entire identity and sense of self worth rests on the accident of their birth, and people should be free to tell them that. On the other hand, they should also be free to broadcast their stupidity to the world. People do not have the right not to be offended and for good reason- there's always something that offends someone and if you're going to ban symbols because they offend you're going to end up with a monumental list of banned stuff. And I'm really rather tempted to change my avatar to some Jain symbology, because Jains are cool.

Facebook polls allow one vote per account, I believe. It would still be susceptible to minor stuffing from people who had multiple FB accounts (though I cannot imagine anyone, even the PCGMR, being so desperately partisan that they'd bother) and the various other problems like being a self selected sample, being (I presume) in english so favouring xbox etc. It is pretty good as an illustration of the results of bias, and potentially (as below) how you ask the question since I don't think anyone believes 70% of sales will be on PC. Oh, and in Breaking News... 70% of people who intend to play BF4 want to do so on Origin!

Mohammed cartoons. Freedom of speech, essential to be able to express yourself, not offensive to our culture, anyone getting offended is just some radical who should gtfo. Swastika. Symbol of hatred, only racists and nazis want to use it, deeply offensive to our culture, anyone not offended by it is some radical who should gtfo. Truth is of course that if you walk down most any street in Asia with a swastika eyelids will not be batted, its negative connotations were entirely constructed 80 odd years ago by an Austrian meteorist and failed art student. That it was stolen in the first place is offence enough, trying to tie it down as being ultimate symbol of evil!!!! when it simply isn't in anything other than a 'western' context further compounds the offence. India alone has twice the population that would not be offended by a swastika than the entirety of the 'west' that would.

Most of the eastern countries have the same basic problem with birth rates that the west has, something that most of the ME and Africa do not. So there's more competition, and less supply. But that has happened to an extent, there were an estimated 1 million Poles in the UK at one point which is far more than come from any African or ME country and probably more than all 'unintegrated' immigrants combined, I note that the fear about Romanians and Bulgars invading is starting to ramp up from the usual quarters as well- and obviously from my anecdotal experience I was primarily working with east euros (one Iraqi only, and he was married to a nice english girl). As Nonek pointed out though, east euros are hardly immune from anti immigrant rhetoric either.

I've been replaying IWD2- and the other IE games previous- and to be quite honest I've found their interface annoying. They're still good aesthetically but from a usability point of view I'd far prefer something more akin to NWN2's less pretty but more flexible approach. If there were a binary choice I'd pick usability over aesthetics every time. I think something like curryinahurry's effort from a few pages back would be my ideal as it balances the two well.

Truth is that a certain level of unemployment is seen as beneficial- and that the social fabric of most western countries is unsustainable as it stands. First part is because unemployment- and especially low wage/ skill unemployment- keeps down wage demands and costs and ensures that productivity gains do not have to be passed on to the (replaceable) workforce. If the workforce weren't replaceable the balance of power shifts and superprofits become a thing of the past. Second part is because most western countries are at or below population replacement thresholds and face the prospect of having an ageing population wanting pensions but fewer people paying the taxes needed to fund them. 'Solution' is to import more people of working age*. It's a stupid solution because you cannot keep increasing population forever, but politicians gonna politicise and there ain't any hard decision (like upping the pension age) a politician won't put off if they can get away with it. *And frankly, there are jobs that westerners count as beneath them. When I was in the UK in 2005 I ended up working with a bunch of Ukrainian/ Romanian/ Bulgarian people because they could not get enough British people to fill the vacancies- and those they did get were frequently unreliable and did not last. The imports worked harder and were more reliable, and were probably cheaper, too.

It probably would be better if everyone could just ignore AAA as a label as it doesn't really have a proper definition and what it is and isn't varies from person to person. Some would say it's impossible to have a AAA title on mobile phones, others would say not and it all depends on what weighting is put on the various factors. Some would say that it's a sliding scale, so a $400 million movie means a $30 million movie from 30 years ago ain't AAA any more while others would say the old movie still is. Is TWitcher 2 AAA? Is its budget high enough, was it aimed at enough people, did it sell enough? All subjective. Personally on PC I'd regard HL2, Diablo2/ Warcraft3 off the top of my head as being AAA from around a decade ago, add in Halo and GTA3/VC at least for consoles. Going back 20 years I'd have Wing Commander 3/4 as well, as I'd regard its original designation/ purpose/ relative costing as being permanent rather than transitory.

Macho Man >>> Hulk Hogan They're both inferior to great communist hero Nikolai Volkov though

360 is very much a western thing, and specifically an anglo thing- which is why so many people thought it 'won' this round of the console war, because it did well in loud countries like the US and Britain. It's significantly outsold the PS3 in the english speaking world, but the PS3 despite having a year less has still sold better overall. That's one of the reasons the On3's launch was so focussed on stuff that only applies in the US, it's the largest market for their stuff and the one in which they were actually successful. In contrast the PS4 will be rather more consumer friendly because it's aimed at a more worldwide audience which won't have large data caps, fast connections and the like. Live doesn't even service nearly 80% of countries, and it's going to be compulsory...

Second part is already addressed, but the first part is just... Terrorists of 1776 who attacked their own country, terrorists of 1861 who attacked their own country, terrorist mujahedin in 1980, terrorist rebels in Syria now, terrorist rebels in Libya (presumably supported by terrorist west as well), the possibilities are endless.

There's an exclusion against being in uniform if you're in your own country and not part of an organised army. It's specifically to protect armed resistance to invaders and those in civil wars so that you don't end up with people claiming all the rebels or resisters they executed was justified by them not being in uniform. I wouldn't classify it as an act of war either, I just don't think it's unjustified that they would view it as such and certainly don't think it's terrorism.

If you want an example, look at SimCity. 1.6 million sales according to EA's last quarterly report. If they sold all of those on Origin at full price (they didn't, of course) they'd have made $96 million from it. If Tomb Raider sold 4 million at retail, on console, it would have made similar to that for SqueeNix despite selling more than twice as much. That's the big advantage PC has, even if the example is skewed to be extreme- and you can bet SC had a far lower budget than TR as well. That's also a PC exclusive game released this year that sold a million plus... It also explains why EA aren't keen on afflicting their games with steam- the difference there would be as much as $30 million going straight to Valve as opposed to them. Of course, steam as a gated portal/ walled garden console-on-PC is the only* real threat to proper, true, open PC gaming but fortunately there are brave, principled and uncorruptible entities like me or EA out there fighting the good fight against the heretical steam zealots. Steam vacuum facet! Steam delendam esse! *maybe until win8.1

I've never counted the attack on the USS Cole as terrorism for precisely that point- it was an attack on combatants, by combatants. Just because it's on US combatants doesn't make it terrorism, nor does them not radioing in their intentions so they could be obliterated by a missile from miles out. When it's impossible to get things like IranAir 655 which were outright military on civilian even to be considered mistakes let alone terrorism (which it wasn't) there's a massive double standard operating. What is good for the goose has to be good for the gander Personally I wouldn't call this particular case terrorism either. It has two problems, firstly if you're going to count killings of enlisted combatants as terrorism because it has a political element then any drone attack on Taliban or Hamas is terrorism- they're political, and it's very difficult to argue than someone like Sheik Yassin of Hamas, an old man in a wheelchair, is an active combatant, he was killed for pure political effect- and secondly you've abrogated the whole concept of 'fair' warfare by using drones in the first place. The drones and their operators don't care if the target is chilling out watching tele, asleep, boffing his wives or whatever. In fact they'd count it as an advantage if they're asleep, and they're already killing someone at no personal risk from the safety of Diego Garcia or Nevada. In that context running someone over is positively fair and balanced. I'm not defending what happened any more than I'd defend a wedding party or reporters being blown up by western pilots/ drones, but there is more than a mite of the old "the terrorists don't fight properly, they won't take their AKs into a field and wait to be pulverised fair and square by Abrams/ F22s/ Apaches/ Predators as any honourable person would!" justification about the whole thing. Oh, and the usual stink of political expediency. Gummint needs to know everything everyone says, it's for your safety!

Belgian waffle fests are better than Academic waffle fests, certainly. On the original it would depend on the context. Treatise, examination, hypothesis, mental experiment, discourse, debate all would fit depending on the circumstance. If it's a formal group presentation it would be a conference, if it's a formal publication it would be, well, a publication/ article.

No it doesnt. It means that I haven't heard of any of their games make a splash which considering how much time I spend on this hobby means that they're either garbage or not featured in any of the more popular publications. OK, it probably means that you regard CoD/ BF or MoW/ CoH as wargames if you think you like them but have never heard of Matrix/ Slitherine. They'd be the biggest maker/ publisher of computer wargames (as opposed to fps/ rts using war as a setting) by a fair margin.