Zoraptor

Looks like they swore the Hypocritic Oath rather than the Hippocratic one :caruso: Funny, dictators in other countries like Jemen mow down their citizens in the dozens or hundreds, yet I don't hear anything about these atrocities from the US/NATO. No "humanitarian" mission there. Must be because they have no oil. Well, there is Bahrain which does have oil. And has what is basically an organised pogrom of the Shia designed to crush them permanently going on right now under the mandate of foreign forces with systematic destruction of Shia religious sites and such wonderful humanitarian gestures as arresting doctors who have treated protesters as well as torture and beating to death of said prisoners. All done to a crescendo of criticism from the great supporters of freedom in the West, of course.

Wizardry (latterly 1, or PGotMO) was the first real RPG that I can remember well, though I can remember that I kept on getting killed by a dragon in "Dragon's Eye" before that and that even when I found whatever it was we were looking for I couldn't find where in Fell City to take it to actually win. I don't think I was even school age at that time. I still have both those games, shame the Apple to play them on has long ago shuffled off to Silicon Heaven.

Real Estate Dude (Jason Anderson?) is back in development anyway. At inExile? So far as I can recall just about everyone who was at Troika is still working in games development.

Same here. I'd prefer to buy TW2 from GoG and avoid SecuROM but with my bandwidth cap it's a non starter unless I find someone local willing to cut me a DVD of their install files (and I'd no doubt run into the fact that "I've bought the game, honest, cut a brotha a DVD will you?" sounds just a touch dodgy) I always get a chuckle from people who go apoplectic about SecuROM's one off activation- which in the case of TW2 will get patched out judging by TW1- yet love Steam's constant activation model.

So, Gog is (presumably) going to get xcoms, finally. Rather ridiculous that every single digital distributor except the old games specialist had them. You can get a good idea which titles of EAs are likely coming by the cease and desists they are (and have been) sending out to abandonware sites over the past month or so.

Never heard of it before. IIRC the last one was called "Dawn of Discovery" in the US.

That would be true for Bioware the Independant Company, not so much for Bioware the Wholly Owned Subsidiary. Previous development time and time to shipping for DA(O) would have been factored into the purchase price. The cost to EA would only be the ~ 2 years from buy out to shipping. 18 months seems a fair estimate. They brought in a 3rd party to do the console ports so presumably the Bioware DA team did not sit around twiddling their thumbs for six months from April 09; otoh (presumably) some Bioware people were helping them out and Awakenings took time and man hours too. I'm still of the opinion that they had enough time for a expandalone type game and that the problems with DA2 largely result from factors other than shortness of 'raw' time. Time would fix some of the more egregious issues (copypasta dungeons) but a number of its problems stem from production issues that suggest it was just poorly managed in some respects. Overall it seems likely that Bioware simply could not cope well with being told that they had to get the game out the door in March to make financial Q4.

Space Rangers 2: Reboot would be worth a try if you're not wedded to direct control of space combat and have tolerance for whacky Google Translate dialogue (or if you can speak Russian).

Jade Empire: great presales, very good early sales, then nothing. That's what they want to avoid. Given the number of preorders DA2 was supposed to have had 1 million sales is not particularly impressive after two weeks.

You may be being a little unfair here. There is, after all, evidence that the rebels have been summarily executing africans they've found in areas they control as 'mercenaries' which would probably be close enough to "genocide" for a generous interpretation. Perhaps Mr Ban is just a little confused about which side is doing what?

I'd need some very compelling evidence to believe it. Incentives- nice hotel rooms, gift packs, advertising for the websites and such, even just being able to keep the product once the review is finished or the promise of reviewing more items- for good reviews are a given as are 'punishments' for bad ones, per Gerstman. Paying for bad reviews of a rival's products though? Way too little benefit, way too much trouble if you get caught, perhaps even real legal trouble depending on where you tried it. If anyone were doing that they would have to be mind bogglingly moronic.

That's a bit too :tinfoil: It's far more likely to be a combination of expectation unfulfilled (what is this RPG combat you speak of? I pressed A and nothing awesome happened) and it being a target that is 'OK' to bash. It also isn't helped by the low quality and fast turn around of games journalism meaning that very few would have finished the game- or, rather obviously in some cases, even made it out of Saudi- let alone replayed it.

BTW, _I_ 'remember' Christian lynch mobs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs That's what I'm sayin'. 60 odd years ago. Sabra and Chatila? Kosovo/ Bosnia? Jos? Northern Ireland? There've been plenty of times where christianity has been used as an excuse for murder as well.

Potentially the most important bit of PC gaming news of the year: GameStop buys Impulse + Or it may be a damp squib, depending on how adroitly/ ineptly GameStop decides to handle things.

Metternich is an odd chap to refer to, Machiavelli would fit a whole lot better as he almost certainly would approve. Metternich spent almost his entire career trying to make sure a balance of power was maintained and that, effectively, nothing changed. He was also just a touch reactionary. I rather suspect he'd regard this latest adventure much the same as he regarded Napoleon's imperial adventures.

Oh yes, the UN has now formalised that its charter ain't worth the paper it is written on. It's not a good precedent that has been set, it is a terrible one. It is not just the west, self-satisifed, bloated and slowly percolating in its own stewed sense of superiority that can use this precedent, thusly: Russia v Georgia It's grossly hypocritical for the same set of players who decried the Russian 'invasion' of Georgia (done in response to Georgians attacking rebels and mandated peacekeepers and their well documented use of, wait for it, Grad missiles, aircraft and tanks on residential areas in Tskinvali) to be spouting off about the Moral Clarity of intervening in Libya. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Who is deserving of freedom has everything to do with who the west's friends and enemies are, nothing to do with morality. Why do Kosovars deserve freedom but Abkhazians don't? Because Georgia is a friend of the west. Why is the quality of Libyan freedom so much greater than that of Bahraini (picked because it is tiny both geographically and in population, and has a large US presence there already, not because they are particularly egregious) freedom. One is an enemy, the other a friend. It is as far from codifying a great moral advance for the UN as it is possible to be, all it has done is clarify that pretty much anything up to and including the UN's own rules can be ignored so long as it is us, not them, doing the ignoring.

Case in point: "The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation. As Commander-in-Chief, the President does have a duty to protect and defend the United States. In instances of self-defense, the President would be within his constitutional authority to act before advising Congress or seeking its consent. History has shown us time and again, however, that military action is most successful when it is authorized and supported by the Legislative branch. It is always preferable to have the informed consent of Congress prior to any military action."

Call me naive, hell, call me an idealist, but I'm of the opinion that justice and fairnes are if not one and the same, inextricably linked. When you propose that justice applies only when it's convenient, you are proposing a double standard dictated by economic reasons. This is fundamentally unfair, and so what you are doing is no longer "justice"... it's something else. It is my opinion that you cannot have "some" justice - you either have justice or you don't. This is the crux of the disagreement and I'm happy to let it rest. I agree, there's a fundamental principle at work that justice be applied fairly, evenly and not by convenience. It's ironic, because one of the defining characteristics of 'failed' or 'repressive' regimes and countries is that they have a might makes right approach to the application of justice. A state sanctioned torturer will not face justice for killing someone, neither will someone in the ruling circle or someone who is too powerful to piss off. Some random pleb though? String him up as an example. I don't think it's really too much to ask that the UN has a better philosophy of justice than the rulers of Somalia, Libya or Burma.

They justified it under a different section relating to 'threat to international peace', which is just a touch tenuous. Difficult to imagine they didn't read that section though as it is (iirc) from the UN Charter, not some obscure half remembered unimportant write and forget document. It was the specific section I was thinking of when saying it would be nice if there was a UN supreme court.

Arguably that actually strengthens the case. Much evidence suggests Blair et al went well out of their way to silence/ obfuscate contrary opinions and make sure that war was presented as legal despite them knowing it was on shaky ground. That suggests that they were acutely aware of the importance of 'legality' as a concept. If there were a body capable of saying "well, no, not legal actually, at least so far as the UN is concerned" all that effort would have been redundant and they would either have had to say the political equivalent of "bugger legality we're doing it anyway" or not participate. Practically, since (iirc) they required a vote to participate and many in Labour were already opposed it probably would have been no action.

Think of it this way: the fundamentals about crime/ punishment/ rehabilitation is that you cannot tell with certainty who is going to offend (though you can assess risk factors) and you cannot tell with certainty who is going to reoffend. Is there a way to ensure people don't reoffend, apart from throwing them in jail permanently? If no then you have to accept the corollary to further incarceration or punishment reducing reoffending- a lot of people who won't reoffend will end up spending more time in jail which costs money and time they could use constructively, and if they aren't going to reoffend that has no point beyond being able to say "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime". Or in other words I see no reason to focus solely on the bad 39% when there is a corresponding and larger 61% where the system seems to have actually worked. I don't worry about being shanked on the street by a released prisoner who wants to nick my wallet for the same reason I don't worry about being run over by a car/ struck by lightning/ hit by a meteor/ blown up by terrorists. There's no point worrying about it, if it happens it happens. I'd be somewhat peeved if it happens but not significantly more so than if it were a psychiatric patient or Joe Random having a bad day as opposed to an ex con.

Superheavies like the US or China ignoring rulings would certainly happen and is not a change from what happens now when they either veto stuff in the first place or basically ignore (or actively work against) them as with entities like the ICC. The second tier powers like France and Britain that like to dress things up in a veneer of legality though? They'd have far more difficulty being told that "resolution x contravenes the UN Charter" and then blithely continuing. It won't happen anyway so it's just an idle thought.

What is badly needed is an equivalent of the US supreme court that is able to say to any UN body"well, actually, the UN charter says you cannot do that".

Idi Amin, nobody has ever accused Ghadafi of eating his enemies- accusations of vampirism from some Benghazianis notwithstanding- and he has a similarly unique approach to sartorial elegance. Bokassa from the Central African "Empire" probably takes the cake, or at least some nicely seasoned dissident patties- on ludicrous though. "Sadly" they're both ineligible for anything but an in memoriam prize.

1) You didn't put a notice saying that discussion of anything outside the UK is verboten 2) No mention of more severe punishment was made (by anyone at all, so far as I can see) 3) The conclusion can be drawn that if 39% reoffend then the remaining 61% don't. It's an implied figure based on the knowledge that a percent is a number out of 100 and reoffending/ not reoffending is a binary principle- you cannot partially reoffend, you either do (39%) or do not (100-39=61%). It's also based on the knowledge that if there's an option that implies the world is ending and one that doesn't the one that gets used is the shock horror one.