Zoraptor

Your view of Indonesia is a decade or so out of date.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.

Ultimately you can't stop terrorism without 'nation building', practically you can't do nation building without the approval of the large majority of the people living in that nation. I tend to think that Germany and Japan have given a false impression of what can be done because, ultimately, there was almost no resistance to occupation in either of those cases and the occupiers were there, effectively, at the people's invitation. Neither of those things are present in Afghanistan though.

With advanced algorthyms, databases and lots of computing power data mining is trivial. You may be better off if you use basic precautions (turn off 3rd party cookies, use only one internet product per company- ie don't use both Google search, Gmail, Chrome, nuke doubleclick etc) as they make you more opaque and there are easier targets amongst the mass of the uninformed. Perhaps the single biggest problem is that you don't have control over what is in your own 'file' and who it is distributed to. If someone tags an image with "Forename Initial Lastname*, well know criminal/ drug dealer/ paedophile" then Forename Initial Lastname may well be labelled a criminal (via information on database) just on that person's say so, without Forename Initial Lastname even being aware of that labelling, and without Forename Initial Lastname having any right to get the information corrected even if he does find out about it as it may already have been distributed to 3rd parties. *I was going to use a made up name, but it would be ironic if someone actually had that name and I ended up accidentally slandered them.

Comparison? I made no comparison. What I said is certainly correct, though. If you disagree, could you please explain why? Read the wikipedia article on the Ustashe. Take a moment to reflect on why you might have been just a tad offensive. And do stop being disingenuous: it's a comparison every bit as much as it would be if I wrote a list of genocidalists you wouldn't want writing history: Nazis, Soviets, Australians (yes, I've been to Tasmania); it's a rhetorical construct designed specifically to associate X with a bunch of negative stuff.

Sheesh Krezack. I really hope you're just ignorant rather than trolling deliberately with that comparison.

It wasn't just that which gave me such a negative opinion of Radovid, if you One thing's for sure, after that and simple grabbing of collars won't qualify as capital E extreme any more.

Finished second playthrough, went Roche and full on swords. A rather different experience, on the gameplay front I got 2 greater mutagens the whole way through whereas with the magical guy I had them coming out of my ears. I also ran into some bugs and some crashes I didn't get with the release patch, most annoyingly Still liked it a lot, and its many small annoyances remain small and largely ignorable.

They have to, France and Britain have bet the entire organisation's credibility on success. They pretty much have to do anything and everything to win now. Propaganda is as propaganda does. Not like NATO doesn't use it, they just get an acritical reception- how often have they used the "we only killed terrorists today" [..] "can't comment now, we're investigating that incident two days ago" [..] "well, maybe we actually did kill some civilians a few weeks ago, hope Lady Gaga or Pippa's posterior didn't distract you in the meantime"; and it works every time.

You need the save to be in the right place (..\My Documents\The Witcher\saves) and it also has to be from the 'right' place, ie not any old save will do it has to come from- so far as I am aware, based on having 2 eligible saves from each of my Witcher playthroughs- directly before or after the final fight. Of the import items Aerondight at least is pretty useful thanks to the three upgrade slots. I used it well into Chapter 2. The nerfs were clearly carried out for gameplay reasons, much as you end up with Epic Gnolls/ Random Goon who just happens to be Armed With +3 Stuff in Throne of Bhaal or NWN2. The one thing I found really silly was getting a Raven's Armour schematic as a reward when the first game makes it clear that it is a unique item requiring unique parts and assembly technique. Funny that they nerfed the prologue in the new patch, I replayed it the other day and having died a lot on normal first time went through on hard without getting hit at all, except by archers.

As are ambulances, and we know from the friendly fire incidents that NATO had no problem blowing them up. Though I tend to agree otherwise- I've always thought the "[blah] don't fight fair" blather from technologically advanced nations is assinine. Hamas/ Taleban/ Libyans/ Serbs or whoever going out into a nice flat field to fight Israel/ NATO/ NATO/ NATO (golly, NATO fights an awful lot of defensive wars, doesn't it? Reminds me of Rome, who never fought an aggressive war in her history, at least according to her historians) in a 'fair fight' would end with them getting whacked instantly by Apaches, AC130s, cruise missiles etc. Which isn't brave or honourable, it's stupid.

I don't think EA holds the full rights to System Shock in any case which would (potentially) rule it out on a more or less permanent basis and irrespective of whether other EA titles become available. Most of the other residual EA titles were made by companies EA either owned fully at the time or bought outright later, like Bullfrog/ Origin/ Westwood and as such are likely owned EA properties in toto. The same cannot be said for System Shock. Ken Levine apparently tried to buy out the rights to System Shock prior to Irrational being bought by 2k and left the impression that while EA held the trademarks and such, and could potentially make sequels, they did not hold the full rights which were held by [random LGS wind up entities and creditors]. There's also the possibility that any residual royalties could be paid to competitors; 2k, via Irrational and Squeenix, via Eidos; or that permission from them is required to distribute whivh would provide additional legal problems.

Depends on Hasbro, most likely. I tend to suspect that they'd be very happy to be able to licence D&D to someone other than Atari's shambling corpse at this point.

vysnc, most likely. If it's on it the framerate will only reach (typically) 60 or 30 fps for a 60hz digital monitor and there will be little or no variation.

I couldn't see anything with him due to the screen jumping around madly. I suspect he's also the hardest boss fight with the all magic build I had. I finished last night, overall impressions extremely positive despite a large number of small issues. I had only one crash in total. Iorveth path spoilers. Will replay taking the other storyline, would also buy TW3 (or an expansion) tomorrow were it available.

I was somewhat peeved at the lengths I had to go to get the patch applied (despite removing all dlcs etc I ended up having to wipe all the witcher 2 directories completely and make sure I was disconnected when installing- it finally decided my version existed, on the third reinstall) but it seems to have provided another performance boost. I am still on Chapter 2. I know a lot of people have said it felt short but it doesn't seem short to me.

Yes, I actually thought that was the Bioware Twist Moment and Roche was deliberately rescuing him rather than just being spectacularly tunnel visioned and incompetent.

USPTO still says Sega owns the trademark, which would usually mean that they own the IP. It's not 100% indicative though and there are plenty of ways that Obsidian could either own it or get it back if not (reversion clause, buyout clause etc). Realistically though there is probably little significance as to who owns the IP as there is little chance of someone stumping up the money for a sequel which makes the whole thing rather moot.

Patch doesn't work for me either. Suspect it may be because I'm using the GOG executable (or because I've got the "No Knockers Plz We're Ockers" version with the censorship 'patched' out) over a retail install. I'm not worried personally as I've had no technical issues to speak of. I agree, that quest felt a bit 'off' in a number of ways. If it had been altered from the original then there is the question of where the trapdoor where you find the bodies leads to (minorish Act 1 path choice spoiler That interpretation makes little sense in the game as shipped though.

They've been used in missile defence for a long time, for burning out sensors on heat seeking missiles.