Zoraptor

Heh, I probably came across a little more aggressive than the intention was. The reason for wanting direct links to the developers is twofold; first, if you buy that way near 100% of the price goes to them. In this case I'd have complained if the links were to Impulse/ Gamersgate/ D2D/ Amazon download or whatever. Developer links also make them less reliant on vendor specific, time limited, special offers for those specifically bargain hunting. For a Grand Indie Megathread type thing links to specific offers are better made in subsequent posts, as and when the offers occur, in my most humble opinion.

Lazy lazy, though typical, links to Steam for non-steam exclusive titles (Amnesia, Torchlight immediately obvious). At least they aren't referrer links, I guess.

More likely hype via false shortage as with lots of new release electronic fripperies; SO MUCH DEMAND WE HAVE LITERALLY RUN OUT OF INTERNETS!!!1!!! HOPE YOU AREN'T MISSING OUT!!! BE IN QUICK ETC ETC. The demand would have to be more insane than the love child of Caligula and George III to trouble Google.

RPGCodex is my no 1 source for news on RPGs* and on current events in european countries like Georgia. Did you know that some B list hollywood types visited there last month and that its main exports include scrap metal and fruit and nuts? Fascinating. *actually RPGWatch is.

The South Island already produces a surplus of power from hydroelectric projects, but a large proprtion of this is lost in transmission to the north island, and since the SI gets absolutely no benefit* yet all the problems the idea of sticking wind farms there for the benefit of foreign companies or Auckland is deeply unpopular, especially as one of the main tourist attractions in the south is precisely that you don't turn a corner and run into a forest of turbines. It is more efficient to produce the energy near where it is to be used, so more geothermal plants in the central NI would be far more sensible and efficient than turbines in the south, but politicians know they'll have far more problems sticking turbines or other generation in 'sensible places' (Hunuas, Waitakeres, One Tree Hill and other places around Auckland) due to the NIMBY effect from the higher population density that makes generation there sensible in the first place. *There did use to be. Basically, the power companies love running the cheap hydroelectric power into the ground and if there isn't much rain or snow the dams run dry- they then say that they need to stick more power generation in the SI when someone attaching 2lbs of C4 to the Cook Strait Cable would solve the SI's power problems on a permanent basis. During one of the two times in which the NI was sending power south (for about six weeks) the government decided to abolish the price differential as it was a 'reciprocal arrangement'.

It's fine in a relatively low latitude place like Australia with lots of space, generally lots of sunshine and relatively constant daylight hours but once you start getting towards a UK situation where in winter the sun comes up at 10 am and sets at 4 and the climate is temperate maritime (lots of clouds and rain) it's considerably less practical. Anyone who has spent a winter in the UK can tell why solar ain't a panacea for all places- you can't rely on something that will produce minimum power at precisely the time everyone wants to run their heaters. Plus it is still, at this time, rather expensive.

It may be available on the international domain too- I think it was on the BBC World channel (I certainly saw the Ugandan officer bit while channel surfing) so you could check there.

The main difference is that iTunes doesn't sell stuff intrinsically linked to Windows- an mp3 or equivalent functions fine without windows- ultimately 90%+ (and probably 98%+) of the stuff bought on Steam absolutely requires Windows to run. Not really, and certainly for the most relevant parts Valve itself adopting the bundling = success model (the 'Internet Explorer' model, if you like) with no reservations and no qualms from HL2 on implies they think the situations are comparable. And there's simply no comparison to bundling with individual games vs bundling with the baseline OS in terms of penetration. As for the rest, a few Steam loyalists refusing to upgrade ain't going to upset MS in the slightest if they can get IE like market share since we all know how good computer gamers are on following through on boycotts and, really, what are you going to do? Switch to Linux? It's all predicated on MS not half-arsing it but really, how many companies have gone up against MS on its home turf and actually won? I can only think of one and it's been diversifying itself as quick as possible.

This, basically. MS has two methods: buy and integrate the competition, or if they aren't for sale make them irrelevant by leveraging their OS domination. MS controls the operating system and as soon as it gets the motivation to it can and will drive whatever competitors it wants into the ground. Steam makes a nice, fat, tasty target; MS already has the infrastructure and platform and a technique which has worked fine previously. entrerix's post is particularly apropos: I hardly know anyone who uses IE either but I'm happy to acknowledge that that is because I am an elite individual of taste and refinement; IE has still got 70%+ of the market and it was higher than 90%. 'Click butan for internet/gaems' straight out of the box is what MS will be offering and it is hugely powerful. The power of the Default is exactly what Steam has been trying to establish (getting installs is Steamwork's raison d'etre, they aren't doing it out of charity) and MS can get that at the flick of a switch.

If they have no profit they aren't a viable business, long term, or even really medium term. I rather suspect what was meant was that most businesses would be effected negatively in that suddenly a lot of people would have higher taxes and less take home pay- or become unemployed- leaving them with less income to spend and less discretionary spending and thus less to spend with those businesses; and as a consequence otherwise viable businesses will start failing.

Steam is pretty much irrelevant now that MS is going to integrate GFWL into Windows 8. Gabe's baby will go the way of Netscape/ Lotus/ Wordperfect and all it will take is a few "our latest update broke Steam? This is totally unexpected. Hope they can fix the problem soon". Better get into that iOS/ Android market soon, Valve*. Shame they couldn't get their stuff coordinated boycott wise, if the 'brave and morally upright retailers' and the other DD vendors had coordinated their boycotts to 'try to stop the infection of their customers computers by Steamworks afflicted games and distortion of the market by 3rd party bundling and loss leading' (see what I did there CVG?) they might have had a chance of success, though it'd still be MS ultimately once they got bothered enough to leverage their OS dominance. *Surely they aren't dominated by the OS makers marketplaces, after all.

EA's financials specified both DA2 and DS2 at "over 2 mil SOLD", not shipped. Sold in ~ shipped "Crysis 2, Dead Space 2 and Dragon Age 2 each SOLD IN more than 2 million units" See as contrast "Mass Effect 2 – sold through over 1.6 million packaged and digital units in the quarter for Europe and North America combined" from an earlier quarterly statement.

Similarly, why do buckets light up in Chapter 1? Presumably the answer to both is that originally Something Else was planned for them. Maybe stepping in the puddles would make more noise and there was going to be a fire (requiring buckets of water) in Chapter 1?

You may, I think, be slightly overestimating the power of the Obsidian Forums Community. Perhaps Freedom Fighter could start posting about UK military hardware on some Argentine boards, should put the fear of god into them. Unfortunately, judging by his avatar he might be batting for the other team and we may get propaganda about Exocets, Super Etendards and Main Battle Llamas.

Herman Cain <---> Herve Caen. Some might say coincidence, I say there are no coincidences. Well, he probably couldn't do worse running the US than he's done running Interplay.

I wouldn't be surprised if 2 out of those 3 die at some point, and I'd go so far as saying it is likely for one.

Perhaps one of the reasons the US is in such a bad state is that apparently no one can tell the difference between debt 'doubling' and a 33% increase.

Seems it was Steam's decision- always likely since it didn't disappear from any other download vendor.

Your view of Indonesia is a decade or so out of date. The religious clashes (Ambon, Atjeh) are quiescent and most of the separatists are considerably less militant now they feel they actually have a say and the army has some brakes on its power. It ain't perfect by any means but it's far better than it was, and improving.

Russian list I'd expect most to have heard of: Mussorgsky Prokofiev Rachmaninov Rimsky-Korsikov Shostakovich Stravinsky (Tchaikovsky) German* list I'd expect most people to have heard of: (JS Bach) Beethoven Brahms Handel (Mozart) Strauss (Wagner) *Including Austrian and those working overseas eg those who worked in England Could also add a couple of others eg Schumann; Mendelsson + Pachelbel too though they'd be marginal, as I know both because one piece each is used in weddings. But well, not a huge difference and I suspect they'd be 1 and 2 on the most recognisable classical composer lists. Bach, Beethoven and Mozart probably shade anyone on the Russian list to give them an edge, but it's hardly a walkover. Wikipedia lists, for comparison: German Russian

While I agree that pmp10 is grossly underestimating Russia's historical impact- and by extension that of non western Europe in general- Muscovy got rather smacked by the Golden Horde, sufficiently that they had to pay tribute for around a century, it was Alexander Nevski from Novgorod who stopped them, with a large helping hand from General Winter and Brigadier Boreal. For western Europe it was pretty much only the timely death of Ogodai (iirc) resulting in Subotai being recalled which was the only saving grace as the two most powerful european armies of the time- Poland's and Hungary's- had both been eradicated and the next significant power to the west was France given the HRE's disunity. Russia only really became a major player in western europe in the 18th century, once Poland and Sweden were well on their way downhill power wise. Now I'm getting urges to fire up Crusader Kings again...

Sukhoi 27 variant, allegedly. But much like Russia's putative super fast torpedoes there's lots of rumour and not much hard fact.

Knife throwing useless? It's not as useful as bomb spam against most enemies (especially mook mobs like nekkers) but I'd hesitate to call something which came close to winning three boss fights by itself useless.

Yeah, there are a bunch of other factors at work as well- the staggering level of corruption being perhaps the biggest unmentioned one (another thing Germany and Japan were largely free of). I'd say that the first two are biggest though because they're self perpetuating- militants make attack, NATO makes strike, strike kills people, people's death inflames other people; some people become militants others get less and less accepting of intervention, and back to the beginning just with even those who aren't militants getting a bit more cynical every time.