Zoraptor

It is technically illegal to either order a physical copy or buy a refused classification game from overseas; or anything else requiring classification that has been refused for that matter. Until the Great Firewall of Australia comes online just isn't a way to enforce it. But that is why some DD outlets (Steam) will autoconvert uncensored games to censored based on IP, and irrespective of which version was actually purchased.

Doesn't answer the question, unless you're saying that while the Fallujani were (all) jihadists* (and thus Got Wot They Deserved) the Chechens weren't and didn't. Strip out the rather obvious hyperbole and the question comes down to: Why is the US use of MLRS/ Shake 'n' Bake/ Bombing etc in Fallujah OK, yet the Russkies doing the same in Grozny is not? I ain't really expecting an answer anyway, I'm just amused by the double standards from the Moral Clarity brigade. *they weren't, Fallujah was such a hot spot because the US killed a bunch of people there under very dubious circumstances about as soon as they arrived, and it all went downhill from there.

That the wife was used as a human shield has been debunked, some time ago and by none less than the White House itself.

Well, since you brought up Chechnya elsewhere a nice explanation of why Chechnya/ Grozny = horrible crime against humanity by bestial russian savages while Iraq/ Fallujah = wonderful restrained terrorism fighting by apple pie eating blue eyed liberators which doesn't rely on some sort of "it's OK that we did it, we're the good guys" as a justification might be in order.

Do we really need another discussion on the difference between shipped (sold in) figures and sold through figures? No Ryu, you don't owe your friend a copy of ME3 as for all anyone knows up to a million out of those 2 million DA2s are sitting in inventory or on store shelves gathering dust and haven't actually sold.

Monte hammering a "libtards and hippies KEEP OUT" sign on the treehouse is hardly the most conducive thing for rational reactions either. I do agree with numbersman on most 'targeted killings' as they are often based on flimsy intelligence and have the worst sort of hypocricy in saying that foreign civilians are simply the currency for keeping US civilians safe. ObL though was pretty conclusively self confessed.

I can't really see any disputation over legality and such- ObL certainly considered himself to be at war with the US. Everything we know of him suggests that this is, somewhat ironically, just about exactly how he would have wanted to go out and that the very concept of being captured would have been anathema to him. The real question is whether people would apply the same principle in reverse. So long as the people celebrating would not get upset about the horrendous terroristic illegality of it all if Obama or Cameron or Petraeus got whacked there really ain't any inconsistency.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with sending a kill team after ObL and anyone who says there is... hopelessly unrealistic. He knew what he was getting into and he knew what would happen if he ever got caught I seriously doubt that. What law would we be breaking? The newspapers have obviously been publishing Wikileaks materials for some time now. It's if you're a federal employee (or expect to need a security clearance) and not really applicable for general citizens- they are still considered as classified documents by the US government.

For some reason the quote attributions are getting deleted from this post- to avoid confusion first quote is from Wals, second from pmp10 I did suggest a UN 'Supreme Court' as a balance some time back. It would get ignored by the really big players (anything inconvenient gets ignored by them anyway) but it would stop those who have invested lots in the UN as the sole remaining bastion of their relevance- France and the UK- from dressing anything they like up in a facade of legitimacy. Personally I have a very strong antipathy towards the idea of the UN as any sort of actual world government as it would inevitably end up like the EU, nice theory, crap implementation with decrees and levies issued from on high with little regard for reality. Why should we in the first place? Propaganda has proved itself to be a invaluable tool in directing policies and attitudes of other people so giving up on it for the sake of moral standard seems rather unwise. In this case there was a bit more at stake than just propaganda for domestic consumption. It may be far more difficult to get the BRIC types on board for (or at least not actively oppose) further actions if they think that their forbearance has been abused and that the resolution sponsors cannot be relied upon to do what they say. There's also the issue that the longer propaganda runs the more difficult it is to sustain and the potential for collapse under its own weight. Gulf War II for example, the propaganda did its basic job fine but the blowback from all the WMD/ AlQ links/ Mission Accomplished rubbish left a whole lot of stink in its wake which still hasn't fully cleared.

There are several 'odd' things, mechanical failure is at least plausible since any mechanical issue would be taken very seriously given historical lessons. And they'd probably have some justification for claiming mechanical problems in a situation where minor but otherwise repairable damage from enemy action had occured and a safety first strategy adopted. That you could carry out a 40 minute raid within a kilometer of an officers academy (roughly equivalent to raiding Sandhurst or West Point, and even without considering that one of the most heavily militarised 'borders' in the world is only a few more km away) without the Pakistanis knowing about it is rather less plausible, though it's an understandable thing to lie about given the internal situation in Pakistan. I'd expect a soldier to be able to walk 800m inside ten minutes let alone if there are unexplained choppers and gunfire going off as encouragement.

They did lose a chopper, though I cannot imagine that was a huge concern in the circumstances.

Strangely enough Wals, one of the things universal justice is supposed to prevent is domination of the weak by (and impunity of) the strong. Sadly I can't say I'm surprised that you (1) cannot see the difference and (2) need to pull the straw man of saying that I think the powerful should be excluded. The whole point is that everyone should be included and abide by the same rules. Then again, my point it's that Ernesto Guevara didn't get further than Cuba. Call me when one of these revolutionary groups fighting for independence actually has the mettle to give the US pause If I ever get around to building a time machine I'll be sure to give you a call from 1975. Might even see if I can get Mr Ho (dunno, maybe Vietnamese don't use typical asian name structure and he's actually Mr Minh) to give a call. And while I would not regard Cuba as particularly important in the grand scheme the US government and sections of its population has for much of the past 50 years. In any case it is not solely an issue of winning an armed struggle, which is setting the bar far too high if your 'enemy' is the US*, just the capacity to do 'damage' of various kinds is sufficient. *Doesn't have to be the US, of course, plenty of countries may 'reap what they sow' at some point in the future- Russia and the North Caucasus for example.

I'd always wondered what score you would have given DAO and now I know. 5/10, just like you gave DA2.

From AQ's perspective ObL fulfils his purpose whether alive or dead- on one hand the ability of an old man with renal failure to avoid capture for the best part of ten years was an embarassment and an example, but on the other he's been peripheral and ultimately unimportant for most of the past decade and his example works as well as a martyr as anything else especially for those already of an extremist viewpoint. Getting Al-Zawahiri or Mullah M. O. would probably be of far greater practical impact.

Usually not. Then again, Ernesto Guevara wasn't born with occupation: revolutionary on his birth certificate.

The reason it's stupid is because it is clear to all that they are targeting Ghadafi despite (1) saying they wouldn't and (2) it not being an action to enforce a no fly zone/ prevent civilian casualties. It simply reinforces that there is one rule for NATO or those with power and another for anyone else. Gross selective justice and lack of transparency might be OK for petty despots, absolute monarchs and selected forum posters but it's ultimately a dreadful way of setting up an international order. While you might be happy enough with this implementation you won't be if it's Russia or China who decide to use the precedent because that will be 'imperialism' or some other negative -ism. Ultimately it is a 'problem' with increased information; someone in Uganda or Burkina Faso, or Peru or Indonesia who reads about NATO blowing up ambulances (yeah, each time they blew up the rebels accidentally their precise strikes took out ambulances) and then sees the potifications from Nic or Dave re civilian casualties, international law and the like is unlikely to be so... sanguine and forgicing as the typical westerner.

Misha deserves snubbing for being a horrible liability. I don't think there's a more incomprehensibly stupid leader on the world stage at the moment (Sa'if "UNSC vote coming up so I'm going to spout some rhetoric about slaughtering people in closets" al-Islam Gaddafi might come close).

He mainly got upset at the immaturity of teh bewbie cards, didn't he- and then spectacularly threw a gear about a captured/ tortured woman not wearing a top in the early TW2 preview?

What I really dislike about UAC is that it seems to be arbitrarily linked to a bunch of other, sensible, security options so turning it off turns the other stuff off as well. UAC is sensible for general users but I'm not a general user and am hardly likely to delete kernel32.dll (well, maybe I can with a 64 bit OS but I ain't going to try) in an overenthusiastic bout of housekeeping. And in two years time Boo's computer will be 7 years old and, by your own statement, there will be a shiny new OS out. My computer was very similar to Boo's, slightly better processor, rather better graphics card and the only reasons I upgraded was going from 2 -> 4 GB RAM and that I could get Win7 Ultimate for less than a Big Mac. Buying a new licence for a five year old computer is not a good investment except under specific circumstances such as 64bit migration or to get away from something that is giving you grief (like a genuine POS like ME).

It's Ignus/ Vhailor vs Sarevok, basically. In any case the antagonist in K2 is clearly Kreia rather than her two muppets. And I think everyone would agree that Sion and Nihilus are better than Malak's offsiders Darth Bandon and Kalo Nord... Some of the SW books are pretty decent and some are remarkably dire- I read most of the old ones when I had a semester at uni where I had a six hours break between two lectures. The first three books by Tim Zahn are probably most like the movies, while the ones by Matt Stover are best if you're into pseudo-philosophical wank like I am. Their retcon policy isn't at all absolute any more, Drew K retconned the Jedi vs Sith comics extensively for his Darth Bane novelisation and given what happened in the game things like having both the Disciple and Handmaiden in the same party is already a retcon.

While Putin/ Medvedev have done a lot of good for Russia's economy and are infinitely more competent than that idiot Yeltsin I'd bet real money that if you put a graph of gas/oil prices and production under numbersman's graph they'd match just about exactly. The real test of their economic leadership is if they're going to use the revenues to broaden the economy or spend it on feel good vanity projects like the Winter Olympics.

It also sounds unbelievably lame, too. Doesn't sound as bad as it could, though I've been resigned to the retconing of just about everything in KotOR2 from the point details on TOR arrived. In my perfect world it would be written by Matt Stover given the very obvious influence Traitor/ Vergere had on KotOR2/ Kreia, but that ain't going to happen and never was.

There are minor issues with UAC. It doesn't like where some games put their saves and throws prompts like confetti if you try and make alterations in Program Files manually (mods etc) though that can largely be avoided by not installing stuff like that to the PF folder. But otherwise I have had no real problems so far, not a single crash I can recall after the first week of use and only a single piece of software I had has been insolubly incompatible. While I'd rate Win7 better than XP so far on those specs there's no compelling reason not to stick with XP if you're happy with it, unless you can get Win7 for free/ already have access to it and want to try something new, or if you're planning on buying some extra RAM and switching to 64 bit.

I don't think anyone has been advocating willy-nilly intervention, and certainly not me. Ultimately how arabs are governed is a question for arabs, not for any smug, superior and infinitely self satisfied westerner, myself included. Most of my objections* would go if Dave or Nick simply stood up and said something like "we're doing it because we can, we think we'll benefit, no-one significant objects and we can manage the PR by spinning the humanitarian angle". While that isn't the paragon of moral certitude they are trying to spin it is at least honest. *It would deal with one objection, the one relating to the UN ignoring its own founding document would remain.

According to a finnish news site this is iphone specific. The specific implementation may be, but similarly themed issues certainly occur with others. eg Google products Search Engine (note, from a privacy concern its webcrawler and indexing would usually be far more important than any actual searches done using it) Browser (and even if you don't use Chrome, see Ads. Email (Gmail) Web Ads (doubleclick is owned by Google, make sure to at least turn off those 3rd party cookies everyone) SmartphoneOS (Android; things like the app store are gated through google and smartphones whether iPhones or not have a GPS chip) Google's payment system Google Earth/ Maps Cloud storage Distributed apps ..more.. You can build a fairly detailed profile using even a few of those and without needing to find a publicly viewable facebook page or similar and even if you don't you'd have to be careful not to have the webcrawler be able to link stuff. You can do similar with all sorts of things, Credit Cards (where and what you buy, plus the info you disclose on the application); anything with a GPS in it eg vehicles or Sat Nav systems; loyalty cards for shopping; Photobucket, IGN and Direct2Drive (..Myspace, various news websites..) are all owned ultimately by Uncle Rupes and News Corp; etc It's a consequence of the digital and it being easy to get, store, search, duplicate and access information that in previous years would either not be available at all, be available in poorly searchable forms (hardcopies/ paper) or be very expensive to build and maintain. In a world where a $100 hard drive can store 2 trillion pages of text it's simply cheap and easy and there is potentially a lot of value in the information for the company doing the gathering.