Zoraptor

And somehow, reasons for the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt are consistently reported to be the high unemployment rates and skyrocketing food prices. It's no coincidence that the increase of the prices and shortage of bread is one of the oft-cited reasons -along with disproportionate taxes on the bourgeois class and the king's unwillingness to listen- for the breakout in Paris. So I'm sticking with my idea that people don't stand in front of tanks -or bayonet charges- unless they don't have much to lose. And yet it really kicked off in perhaps the arab country with a well developed and well educated middle class. While there are rumblings in the far poorer Jordan (GDP $5300, poverty rate 14.2%, unemployment 13% (30% unofficial)) and especially poorer Yemen (GDP $2100, poverty rate 45%, unemployment 35%) disturbances there are nowhere near the scale or seriousness of Tunisia (PCGDP $9500, poverty rate 3.8%, unemployment 13%) or Egypt (PCGDP $6100, poverty rate 20%, unemployment 9.7%). All figures from the CIA factbook. The pattern of revolution appears to be going from richest to poorest, rather than the reverse.

[citation needed] <insert links on the AKP's struggle against the judiciary and their constitutional reform work> There is an ongoing effort on the part of the AKP to dismantle if not secularism, at least Kemalism, as embodied in Turkey's constitution. This is not an either-or between a return to a less secular Turkey and simply greater powers for the executive, it's actually both. Most of their reforms are aimed not at turning Turkey into an Islamic Republic though, but at reducing the power and influence of the army, with some cosmetic sops to their voter base which is largely conservative. IIRC reducing the power of the armed forces was actually one of the things Europe wanted from them as a condition for EU membership. While I'd agree that a lot of Islamic authorities have been pathetic supine lickspittles to a succession of woeful Arab leaders over the past sixty years the record of Christian denominations has hardly been exemplary over the same time period. That religious authorities tend to bend to the will of authoritarian regimes is hardly surprising. I do find it interesting that much of the recent religious resistance to central government authoritarianism has come from Buddhists in Burma and Tibet (albeit Tibet was as much ethnic as religious resistance).

And where's our in depth critique of AP as a deconstruction of global capitalism and its inevitable failure?

[citation needed] Israel had effectively told the Turks to go four-asterisk themselves well prior to that. Pretty dumb, and probably a consequence of having Avigdor L* in the Foreign Ministry, since Turkey simply does not need Israel. Not that it would have mattered long term due to the flotilla but it was hardly one way traffic in the insult flinging prior to that. You could probably have a good argument with that guy who was talking about Ataturk's "secular dream" earlier. *That mere fact is a **** you to Israel's neighbours. Read some of his policies then compare to those of the AK. One's certainly more extreme than the other, and it ain't Kalashnikov.

There are entirely too many DS acronyms around. Dead Space announces Ser Hawke armour and enemies pack? New screenshots of Dungeon Siege? Good thing the last URL has the name in it.

No, that's not evidence, it's merely correlation, and not a particularly strong one either, as most Western democracies can still pull all sorts of crazy stunts and file them as "classified". Again, the main point is that they can pull- and get away with- less crazy stunts than a more repressive regime can, not that it's a panacea. The US has made plenty of attempts to block 'unpalateable' information by various means yet things like Abu Ghraib and The Pentagon Papers got out and once out were widely disseminated. While everyone in a country like Egypt 'knows' that torture takes place there you won't find it being discussed formally in detail (or at all, really) and pictures published in the papers. I'd say that the relationship goes beyond mere correlation to being intertwined almost inseparably. Though I would accept that they have the same or similar root causes the maintenance of both 'free' democracy' and 'free' speech rest inextricably on each other. Not the case in either Tunisia or especially Egypt as the majority of the early protesters were middle class- hence having good internet and informational access, and much of the organisation taking place via facebook and twitter- and relatively well off with the poorer classes only joining in once it had well and truly kicked off. That's a historically consistent pattern too, going back to the American or the French revolution it wasn't the slaves or peasants who started the revolt, it was wealthy property holders and the middle class. Europeans and westerners in general are pretty coddled, smug and self satisfied. But even if you live somewhere like Greece where there is a lot of corruption (and a lot of resentment, too) you're still very much likely to be better off than a given person in Tunisia or Egypt. You too.

The chief sponsor of Hamas is who it always has been- radical Sunni Gulf States. Hamas gets a lot of their weapons off Iran but their other stuff- social programs/ education/ wages etc- is still overwhelmingly funded by countries that are theoretically US allies. In the end Iran and Hamas are allies for precisely as long as they are useful to each other and for precisely as long as they have a common enemy. The MB or similar having power in Egypt would almost instantly make Iran superfluous to Hamas as they could then simply get arms off them.

Wals- I agree with you on the fact that a large proportion of any given population simply won't find information, won't care if they do and wouldn't know what to do with it. But in the end you should not design such things on the premise of the lowest common denominator as you would be depriving those that do have the ability as well. And that's a fundamentally poor analogy because seatbelts can't kill (well, in the proper hands...), but freely disseminated state secrets can. Therefore, the risk needs to be balanced vs the "right". Seatbelts certainly can kill- a jammed/ locked seatbelt in a sinking car, for example. In any case, I think we can both accept that analogies aren't perfect or they wouldn't be analogies. Which is a relationship that fundamentally cannot be disproven by anecdote because, as you have noted, government and people ain't perfect. It's also a relationship that is fundamentally difficult to prove positively in any absolute sense either- the best evidence is that, by and large, the populations of countries with 'good' freedom of information laws tend to also be countries which aren't 'tyrannical' either. Ultimately most revolutions start because the tinder of accumulated resentments, ideas and information hits the spark of some immediate, proximal cause. I don't think whether it actually succeeds in improvement is a good metric for judging whether it is worthwhile trying. Sure, it could be similar to the Prague Spring where its short term net effect is getting a bunch of people killed and more repression, it could be like the Russian Revolution just with Tunisian Tariq instead of Georgian Joe, or it could be like the end of Ceacescu's Romania where you end up with something that ain't prefect but is a definite improvement or something approaching actually 'good'. When it comes down to it I can see some reasons for being positive in the example of Indonesia which is a huge, ethnically diverse (and fairly religiously diverse too) nation with a traditionally powerful military which transitioned from dictatorship to a pretty good approximation of 'liberal western democracy'. If they can manage it there's no reason why Tunisia or Egypt cannot, but they certainly won't if they don't even bother trying.

That's a fundamentally poor argument as it is analogous to saying "because a seat belt didn't save someone in this accident seat belts are useless". All that has to be proven to refute that is that a seat belt saved someone in any accident. Such as the Tunisian people being saved from the accident of Ben Ali's wife's corruption by the seat belt of wikileaks' freedom of information or any other similar dissemination of information that has helped to root out corruption or bring accountability.

It ain't absolute freedom of information. As was intimated the freedom of information is that required in order to make an informed decision. In a democracy you need to have access to accurate information about what candidates and the government are and have been doing. There's no public good or need in knowing what Joe Bloggs down the street has been doing but there is in knowing what Joseph Bloggs, MP/ Representative/ Senator/ President/ Prime Minister has been doing especially if what he has been doing doesn't match what he says he has been doing.

There's no way Iran is involved. They don't have the capability and there's no prospect of a MB government (or any other really) being friendlier to Iran than Mubarak is. Yemen is a different story as it has a sizeable shi'ite population some of which is already in open revolt, and is next to one of Iran's major enemies. It isn't a question at all. The kefaya movement, so far as I can make out, is a reaction without any political point, and there's no obvious successor to Mubarak. The Brotherhood have an open goal, and all they have to do is make moderate noises and wait. The army won't back the MB, and the MB know it. If there's one thing Mubarak has really done well- not surprising given the fate of his predecessor- it is to make sure that the army is loyal, well paid and definitively not a hotbed of religious zealotry. Shame it's also corrupt as anything, and runs a fairly sizable chunk of the Egyptian economy as its own private cash cow. Some of the media outlets seem to be pushing El Baradei as a possible successor. Peace Prize winner (so he'd have something immediately in common with Obama, haha) who has had enough disagreements with the west not to be seen as a stooge and gives a reasonable impression of not being corruptible. Whether he has any real support within Egypt though is a bit of an open question.

1) One basic tenet of democracy is freedom of information (theoretically at least, practically most 'democratic' politicians loathe freedom of information since it can act against their own political self propagation). 2) One of the major causes of the 'Jasmine Revolution' (dumb name) was the Wikileaks revelation of exactly how corrupt Ben Ali's wife is. Thus WL = supporters of democracy, forcing leaders to be responsible for their actions, partly responsible for liberating Tunisia from tyranny etc etc. Really though, that sort of editorial control is not in WL's brief as their aegis is, basically, freedom of information with the absolute minimum of subjective editing. Plus, they would be withholding something which shows the US in an essentially positive light which would therefore be more ammo for the WL hates the US crowd. Damned if you do, damned if you don't... Palestinian negotiators = two faced is far less of a revelation- it's not really a revelation at all, except for the extent to which they are willing to abrogate their responsibilities to their own people. That it basically confirms the extent to which the Israeli narrative of Palestinian intransigence is a smokescreen to enable establishment of 'facts on the ground' as the PA was willing to accept just about every single demand Israel made (except, to their credit, the transfer of Israeli Arabs to a new 'Palestine') is certainly worth knowing.

It's a vacuum/ utility suit for a guy who has a slightly more important form of Space Janitorship than Arnold Judas Rimmer had. Not even a hint of cyborgness about it- if he had glowing red eye sockets no-one would think the red meant he was The Terminator, would they? How it probably did happen: Marketing Manager: We've got some games coming out close together. Can we get a cross promotion going? Intern: How about putting Isaac's suit from DS2 into Dragon Age? Maybe combine it with a pre-order bonus? MM: Excellent work that man. .. MM: OK Dragon Age producer, we want to do this cross promotion. DAP: Fine, should take five minutes to set up. DAAD: And our new art direction means we've got plenty of armour that looks that silly already in the game! fin

Things like Isaac's Armo(u)r is not worth worrying about it in the slightest- the armour would have been made for DS2 anyway, presumably in MAX or similar and it might well take a matter of seconds to make it work in DA2 if porting directly is possible. It's a bit silly but ultimately there's no reason to really care. The TF hats is a good equivalent really, I tend to think they're rather silly and I find the idea of going out of one's way to obtain one a bit silly too. But some people rather enjoy it, it doesn't take away from the game itself and ultimately there's simply no reason for me to really care. If someone likes collecting hats (or achievements/ trophies, or [something else I consider silly]*) good on 'em, keep trucking. On the other hand chopping bits of DLC out of a game to sell separately or as inducements I don't like much as that potentially does have impacts, even if it's just the added hassle of signing up to the EA database and time doing the downloading- if I'm buying a new game I'm paying the premium because I want to play it now. Having said that, since it encourages waiting for GOTYs/ Ultimate editions which are cheaper and you tend to get the lot at once and for 'free' I can't get too upset about it. *apparently I either don't find much silly or simply don't care enough to remember. Win/ Win either way really.

That is going by the displayed time on the save game (just shy of 12 hours, in the BotM) which amazingly I still have. It was probably a bit longer in practice due to non QBRM dying/ reloading not being counted against that time, and would have been longer had I been playing on Hard rather than Normal.

It definitely took me less than 20 hours to finish SS2 first time, and that was with seeing pretty much every Easter Egg (missed the basketball) and exploring every nook and cranny. Probably around 12-14 hours at a guess, and it takes around seven hours on a standard replay. Then again, I played through again twice immediately after finishing the first time. The proposition that you have to play a game for X hours to have 'really' enjoyed it is just plain ludicrous.

Probably too early for most internet sources as it was in 1996- my prelim search mainly turned up conspiracy theory websites. Perhaps this is sufficient? I imagine Google Images can find the original and retouched versions if you want to see what the change was. To be absolutely fair the paper primarily involved has always (so far as I am aware) maintained it was an accidental artefact rather than deliberate manipulation, albeit an artefact that somehow managed to make it through full editing despite being obvious and appearing on the front page and which somehow other sources that used the same photo managed to avoid.

It's a separate download. The linked site has it there. It's basically the same as the editor for the first two Thief games. Pretty powerful for the time and for what it does, but not the most user friendly and there are some things which cannot (potential source alterations notwithstanding) be altered at all.

And it's not like there isn't a precedent for absolutely deliberate image manipulation as opposed to the more common choosing the most deranged looking photo from an available selection. Martin Bryant's* (Port Arthur massacre in Australia) images were deliberately manipulated to make him look more crazy- they retouched his eyes to be bright red (!) for example. Personally I would have thought killing 30 odd people might suggest he wasn't a pleasant person without the need for Satan Eyes... Everyone likes to think that they can 'spot' potential homicidal maniacs in some way and in the aftermath of such events there is usually a consideration for not wanting to panic people by suggesting there are more people hiding out there waiting for their chance/ a trigger or whatever who look just like any one of us. Releasing a photo which lets people say 'well, he looks bonkers and I could pick up on that' helps with that very human reaction. In this case though mug shots are intrinsically and deliberately set up to make people look at best plain if not outright ugly. I've got at least one old passport photo which makes me look deranged (taken shortly after I tore a muscle in my neck, so I could only hold my head tipped to the right). *who actually looks rather like Loughner did pre hair cut, at least if he were blond.

You can do all of that in the SS2 editor. If you want it 'pre done' try out the ADAOB (Anomalies, Discrepancies and Outright Bugs) or various other balance mods you can get from Strangebedfellows

Better than NV? I don't think so, precisely for the reason he stated, lack of a game world. But may be he doesn't consider NV a shooter hybrid. He didn't like NV much in any case (mainly due to bugs, somewhat ironically).

A lot of the Psi powers were useless. The useful ones though (Invisibility especially) were incredibly useful.

The 'outlets' were PR outlets- IGN, PC Gamer type stuff. I have read the interview that quote came from so I know the gist of the point though, basically that getting physical publishers in NA is a terribly difficult proposition for anything which isn't a Large and Important Project (in which case it likely already has a large publisher behind it). Really though, getting a late, cheap, poorly publicised and (apparently) still DD only release from a 3rd party publisher seems like a failure of fairly epic proportions. Which is rather sad both because at least an earlier relase could possibly have saved Radon Labs and because Drakensang had a lot of potential with TRoT apparently being significantly better than the original.

virumor: yeah. It seems rather weird that if there's going to be only (?) DD English release that dtp would not do it themselves as they did for Stalker CoP rather than subcontracting it out to Valusoft of all people; let alone why- since the English version has obviously been ready for ages- it hasn't got a release a lot earlier...

You needed research skill (you got one skill for 'free' on hydroponics to research Toxin A), time and sometimes chemical(s) for SS2. The primary trouble with Bioshock is that it got every bit of gameplay character streamlined out of it in a succession of focus tests and iterative designs to make it appeal to as broad a base as possible. It really shows in some situations- the inconsistent weapon upgrade stations for example- that entire game systems had been arbitrarily and not particularly subtlely excised at some point.