Zoraptor

Can't agree. Guns do have legitimate uses and as such should not be subject to any sort of blanket ban. Legitimate uses would include hunting, pest control, personal defence (vs animals such as polar bears, rather than the more subjective personal defence vs humans), stock defence and stock management. Reasonable precautions and restrictions are enough to eliminate the majority of gun related incidents. To use a comparison, cars too are dangerous and theoretically if we banned them we would save ~400 lives a year. But they also have legitimate uses and most of the problems associated with them can be minimised by reasonable restrictions (speed limits, licensing, no drunk driving etc). I'd tell people that they should not own a gun if they have no use for it, but then I'd also tell people they shouldn't own a car if they have no use for it. I don't hunt personally but it is a very good tool here for controlling wild populations of introduced animals such as deer, pigs or goats, which would otherwise have a significantly greater impact on our native plants, similar with noxious pests like rabbits and possums. Sometimes it is also (unfortunately) necessary to be able to shoot dogs that are attacking cows or sheep, and to be able to euthanise animals (as) humanely (as possible) without having to physically catch them or wait long periods and incur large bills from vets. Fundamentally I do not like starting from a position of justifying something being legal- it ought to be the reverse, having to justify something being illegal. Something which is dangerous but has legit uses should not be banned outright unless sensible restrictions fail, and those restrictions should be targeted at maximising the reduction of harm, not at an ideological position.

I've been replaying Dead Space 2 to give it a bit more of a chance since I wasn't impressed first time, and it is a lot better this time. I will probably pick up Eador over the next week, as the word of mouth on it has been excellent. Haven't really had much time for gaming though. Was thinking of reinstalling BG1/2 thanks to Tigranes' LP, but the thought of going through ten CDs via a DVD drive with a busted release/ tray motor is a pretty effective deterrent.

Atari would be transferring the licence to WOTC/ Hasbro because they were in breach of contract so their licensing rights were terminated, ending the contract and reverting the IP back to its owners. Same (well, in general) thing as happened for Interplay previously except they reverted to the then licensors.

Passing army duty also requires passing a psychiatric test. I don't think it's any surprise that Switzerland would have lower than expected gun violence stats since the people owning the ARs are both well trained in their proper use and have no detectable underlying mental issues, as that removes two of the biggest potential problem factors in gun ownership from the get go.

It reduces all three, if you take severity of violent crime into account. As always, the problem with statistical science is that people are people and thus complicated rather than a nice simple list of enumerable variables, so it is very easy to Aha! stuff statistically, an approach also used for the Cancer/ Smoking studies and climate change. "Here's a 200 page html doc, read it and get back to me with your Ph.D level rebuttal" is not a counterargument though, else simply bringing in another, later, study not covered by the NAS critique is automatic Win in the other direction unless you can do a similar rebuttal- and oddly enough the cite I made earlier is later than the NAS one, and thus not covered by it. Of course, that isn't actually instant win, same as citing the NAS isn't.

No idea. Probably a combination of facile tabloid journalism, obsession with triviality, "for the children" isms, smug self satisfaction, paternalist "daddy knows best"/ white man's burden holdovers, an education system that is militantly opposed to critical thinking and a population that'll happily march but in the end equally happily accept being blithely ignored. Mind you, a choice between Call Me Dave, Call Me Dave's Poodle and A Milliband is enough to make me (relatively) happy about the choices available here. Right, but want argument is there against them? Dangerous, easy to conceal, used in crime. In the absence of any balancing positives since other tools do their job better and there's no counterbalance that demands legality I cannot see a good reason for them being legal. If you just like shooting handguns you can buy an airpistol or go to a paintball arena. In contrast, for something like knives or long barrel firearms while they have the same(ish) general negatives they also have counterbalancing positive uses which demand they should be available.

He didn't have an AK. He had a Bushmaster .223 I know, I was requoting Boo's example. In the US, I don't really as it's both not really my business and impractical as there are already too many in circulation. I might do it if I were appointed Supreme Cosmic Being for a day and could hand wave it, but under those circumstances I'd probably just make people inherently less violent and tackle the root cause. What I meant was that I would not change the policy here where handguns are very rare and there isn't any credible justification at all for them beyond I Want. For purposes such as hunting rifles and shotguns are perfectly sufficient and in most circumstances greatly superior to handguns anyway; and since there aren't many handguns in circulation there's little self defence argument. I'm not in the UK (though I am a citizen), and the situation I described (for New Zealand) is not the same as in the UK where to most practical purposes firearms are banned unless you're a farmer. Frankly, I'm pretty glad I'm not in the UK as I intensely dislike their successive government's Orwellian streak and their population's sheep like acceptance of it.

I've read it (or at least as much as I can read 50 pages of htmlised book) and I'm unconvinced, to say the least. In essence, it reads like one of those "there's no scientifically robust evidence that smoking causes cancer" reviews from the 80's, ie it's very good at picking holes in methodology. I wouldn't be particularly surprised if there was weaker- or even no depending on circumstances- correlation to suicide and firearm ownership for other western countries, as firearms are typically far less, er, 'convenient' outside the US (ie only rifles available, or having to store ammo etc separately, or not being available to those with histories of depression or mental illness, or more difficult to obtain illegally). People who really want to kill themselves will do so whether guns are available or not, most of the prevention stuff is just about giving people who might change their mind a chance to do so.

While close range negates a lot of advantages of a rifle over a pistol it doesn't negate all of them. A pistol round is typically lighter and slower than a(n assault) rifle round and (all other things being equal) is far less damaging, at any range. Even limited to just handguns there's huge variation in survivability, eg a .44 magnum is far more deadly than a 9mm round. In the particular circumstances of this incident there might not be much difference, but if he had been interrupted there'd be more chance of surviving if hit by a 9mm glock bullet than by an AK round. I've fired a .22, a .223NATO and a .303 (? Lee Enfield from WW2 anyway) and I have no doubt whatsoever that were I ever to be unfortunate enough to get shot I'd prefer the .22, at any range under the sun. Personally I don't see any reason at all why any civilian should own an automatic weapon. They're inherently less controllable and more dangerous to bystanders whatever the context. I also have no problem whatsoever with handguns being banned though that is practically impossible in the US. I'm pretty comfortable overall with the situation here where it's reasonably easy to get a rifle if you have a good reason (hunting qualifies) and can pass the licence for it (basically have people willing to say you aren't bonkers, do not have a drug or alcohol problem and do not have criminal convictions) and have good security such as a trigger lock/ safe/ rack plus keep ammo/ bolt separate from the gun.

There's vast amounts of evidence for the link, eg this from Harvard. It's linked mainly to the tendency of men to attempt suicide less than women but use far more immediate and effective methods.

I'd presume it was the same time as the EuroXBox and PC version actually were released, ie the following February.

There's certainly evidence that spontaneous 'crimes of passion' (domestic violence primarily) and suicides are reduced by not having guns immediately available, as people will often think better of it if given time to reflect- as well as the psychological aspect and separation of using a gun. Those are usually crimes where someone just 'snaps' though, not stuff that requires planning.

I always presumed they were looking for a Macauley Culkin type actor, but he was too old. In fairness to all the actors though, McGregor was... decent and Portman was almost passable and they're both generally well regarded otherwise, so there was clearly something else going wrong quite apart from the quality of acting. "Yippee!!!" and "Are you my mummy an angel?" simply could not have been delivered well because they're fundamentally terribly written lines. Just about everyone involved was one of stilted or bland, except for Palpatine who was a (pretty good) pantomime villain/ scenery chewer, depending on the film. Ultimately the blame for the shortcomings of the SW prequels has to go back to GL who was the one in charge and was primarily responsible for picking the actors, writing the lines and directing the thing ("Faster! More intense!") even if McCullum is actually listed as director. If they'd worked well the plaudits would have been his, as it is you get the distinct impression of someone with good basic ideas but who has literally no-one willing to give him decent Criticism and tell him when stuff doesn't work- or that he simply ignored any criticism given.

Jade Empire? Badly unbalanced, boring, awesome button combat; what should have been a nice unusual/ underused setting turned into cliche worse then The Sword Coast, characters that were the epitome of the Korgarous Wrexwind school of Bioware trope and a main storyline that was about as obvious as it's possible to be. The art direction was rather nice, but has probably aged badly If you think to yourself "what I really want is a KOTOR game with more but blander characters, blander story and blander combat" then you should pick it up, else it cannot be recommended. Probably the worst game I've ever played to completion- sad really, as it had lots of potential that it never lived up to, and that potential was pretty much the only thing that kept me playing. At least it's short.

I think we all agree that Hayden Christensen is the Jar Jar Binks of episode 2 and 3. While I'm hardly a fan, Sir Laurence Olivier could not have done anything with the lines and directing supplied by GL.

Yep. I'm not sure how people can go on about automatic weapons being a bulwark against tyranny with a straight face when the 'other side', if it ever came to that, would be armed with Abrams, Predators and Apaches any of which could kill someone with an M4/ AR15 or an AK easy as blinking and with no chance of any effective response. If you are going to fight against those odds you're far better off with a very accurate bolt action rifle or a very large pile of fertiliser- or trying to get AT rockets and SAMs legalised. Frankly, any resistance of that sort would just be labelled as more Tim McVeigh or David Koresh style stuff anyway. The best defence against government is what it always has been, keeping the police and army well grounded in civil society so that if they're ever ordered to do something truly nasty they'll tell the person issuing the order to go asterisk themselves rather than obey.

The official verdict is that Breivik is not a psychopath- or at the least, not a statutorially insane psychopath- as he was found to be sane by the Norwegian court in his trial. So he, officially at least, was not mad when he committed his crimes.

Don't know about Norway but here they generally don't say 'suicide' or give any details if they can avoid it, saying something like 'no one else is being sought in relation to the incident' or 'there were no suspicious circumstances' instead, though context makes it clear what is meant. Fairly sure it came about after a spate of suicides in one particular town got a lot of attention, and may have been prolonged by the attention.

There's already a Russian/ Polish distributor on board so there will be physical versions in some areas at least (and I guess it is possible that they might be multi-language). Though that was done in the context of getting translations for those languages, something that isn't necessary for english.

Presumably that was for trademark infringement rather than patent infringement though, like Tim Langdell used to do for anything using EDGE that was computer related up until EA squashed him like a bug. Patent stuff is pretty stupid though, such as the infamous Apple 'rounded edge rectangle' and the guy who went to Mexico, bought Yellow Beans, then patented them in the US (and made the Mexicans pay him royalties). Similar thing happened to basmati rice as well.

Sheesh Volo, that's ridiculous. There's plenty of countries that "threw off the yoke of the oppressor" and didn't end up with the US's problems; Poland had to fight tooth and nail for independence on far more numerous occasions, for example. If you want an amateur psychological diagnosis then it's probably rooted as much in the Wild West as the War of Independence, of the Big Man walking into town at High Noon and settling things against Evil Doers with his Colt.

I don't think gun control is particularly practical in the US, just too many about and too difficult to get something that actually works as intended. It's easier if you're starting from a base of low gun ownership, and a lot of these events will be people who just 'snap' rather than anything else, and that is very difficult to detect or prevent ahead of time. Even obvious examples are only so with hindsight on, the majority of people in such stressful situations do not respond that way. Yes, we have. What's your point? Breivik, presumably, and how your (sic) tough gun controls didn't stop him murdering a bunch of kids. The point is, of course, slightly reduced by not getting the country right.

I'm not sure why it sounds like Atari not having the money was a surprise, they had to get external funding for NWN2 as well. It certainly wasn't cowardice though, I'm sure Atari would have loved to have a BG3 made since it would potentially make them the sort of cash they needed to stay alive- but signing a contract you know you cannot fulfil isn't brave, it's fraudulent. Any blame on Atari depends on when they knew they couldn't secure funding and whether they communicated that quickly enough or were stringing Obsidian along. The failure to secure funding itself... c'est la vie.

Yep, rather difficult to see what they're thinking. It sounds like their eyes lit up when they saw 'Stalker' and didn't do their homework wrt the movie/ roadside picnic vs the games, in a sort of "buy London Bridge thinking it's Tower Bridge" type scenario.

bitComposter made the new Jagged Alliance game which was not very good, apparently. They haven't bought the Stalker game licence and really ought to know that given they published CoP exCIS. From the RPS comments someone who contacted the actual owner says that bitComposter hasn't paid him royalties for 8 months either.