Zoraptor

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.

They are probably hoping that someone in the army will step in and remove Ghadafi for them, else it's the equally unpalateable options of observing the resolution and not bombing except to the extent it is necessary to enforce the nfz/ stop civilians being attacked (tacit victory for Ghadafi) or having to even more flagrantly ignore the resolution up to the point opinion turns and hope that Ghadafi goes before that point; if he doesn't victory for Ghadafi. The rebels could probably deal with a random general/ regime insider as up to a few weeks ago most of their leaders would have been classified that way themselves.

They aren't surprised, they knew the west wanted regime change and would ignore the text and theoretical intent of the resolution to achieve that aim. I can't imagine anyone involved in politics is so naive as to not realise that was the tacit aim and result. The reason for their complaints are standard posturing for domestic consumption. They know that so long as they toe the line there'll be no "no fly zone" preventing them from shooting actually unarmed demonstrators (as opposed to armed rebels; deeply ironic senses of timing from the Saudis Bahrainis and Yemenis) with impunity but want to try and minimise any adverse effects in terms of their own stability.

Out of interest, have you played either System Shock 2 or Thief: The Dark Project/ Gold, Orogun?

I didn't know that the Daily Fail had bought the Telegraph.co.uk domain. A bit cheeky, people might mistake them for a respectable newspaper. That sort of article makes me grind my teeth and lament the Decline of Journalism. New study shows that 61% of those convicted don't reoffend. Can't run with that, let's go with: CRIME SCHOOLS RAMPAGING HORDES OF CRIMINALS ROAMING THE STREETS ITZ COMING BABYMEAT DIET FLEE TO THE BUNKER IN AUSTRALIA HOPE THE FLAMETHROWER DEFENCES HOLD HELP I'VE BURST MY BRIAN To actually contribute something constructive: New Zealand figures from 2009. Most of the text can be readily skipped. There are 2003 figures available also.

There are two things to bear in mind there. Firstly, magnitude is 'irrelevant' in terms of how much destuction is caused as the energy can be dissipated very easily and effectively if the quake is deep. Effective damage is measured using the Mercelli scale. The exact way in which this happens is dependant upon a host of factors, of which magnitude is a major, but not sole cause. For example, the 6.3 earthquake in Christchurch- theoretically well below what a nuclear plant is designed to withstand Richter wise- had a maximum Ground Force Acceleration of 2.2g (ie ~21m/s/s), or if you like, the equivalent of accelerating a building to around 70km/h from a standing start over the course of a second. From what I can tell this is 3 times the GFA (0.76g) even the most modern Japanese plant is designed to survive and that was from a 6.3 quake. Apparently the Sendai earthquake's GFA was ~0.5g. Secondly, the tsunami was the big thing and Walsingham's read seems to be pretty fair- they simply did not anticipate so many things going wrong at once as a result of that. While it's very difficult to be sure given the amount of contradictory information floating around it does seem that the actual earthquake proofing worked well and the reactor got 'parked' automatically as it should but even in this state it still needs cooling

Do you have a source on that? IIRC Xbox version bombed hard and I doubt PC version sold that well. Afaik it was published on the old Bioware homepage, before they were consumed by EA.. Nope, which spoke volumes. 5 million selling Baldur's Gate Series!! 3 million selling NWN!!! 3 million selling Kotor!!!! Jade Empire, a game we also made at some point... (Sold around the 800k to 1M mark, by best estimates. Cost MS a great deal as it was late in the xbox's life and a lot of people bought its loss leading console for JE and never bought another game, probably made Bioware money as MS was publisher and supposedly paid a very large exclusivity bonus.)

The exploding reactor bit is perfectly plausible and we've effectively seen reactors exploding (as a common usage definition) even if the reactor core itself wasn't breached. And while there cannot be a nuclear explosion in the classical sense there is plenty of potential for something equivalent to a "dirty bomb" in superheated (plutono-) uranic slag hitting a water source directly. I'd agree that "nuclear explosion" really should not be used though.

Well, potentially they can do that for a game purchased in Australia. The cheap resellers factor (as per Tale, reselling keys from marginal markets, though it may not be obvious that is what they are doing and some otherwise reputable vendors can be hit with the issue even when sending physical copies) and enforcing pricing zones are clearly the major parts of the picture, eg Bethesda, no regional pricing for Fallout 3, regional pricing for FONV; 2k, no regional pricing for Bioshock 2, regional pricing for all their steamworks games. They certainly can block US copies from working in Australia but it's more likely to manifest itself in something like an uncensored copy of [game] morphing into the censored version as soon as you get an Australian IP associated with it.

It can be used to block cheap parallel imports or key resellers. Buy a copy of [game] in the US for 50USD and it may not work on an Australian IP as they want you to buy the 90AUD/ USD equivalent price. Or any other cross border key use you may want- see for example British copies of FONV reportedly not working in Poland (which, amusingly enough, is illegal under EU regs).

Choice is bad. Compulsion is good. People hate options, they just get confused by them. Don't know that Steamworks has been officially confirmed by Squeenix, though its box art being used by Valve to advertise Steamworks is kind of a give away.

You may be right Krezack, as there may well have been multiple similar announcements- I don't really follow the subject that much. I'm fairly sure the one I was thinking of was from the same guy, per Enoch's article: "Another concern of mine was that he is basing a lot of this on the shape of the structures he sees… but looking like a microbe doesn’t make them a microbe! And Hoover goes farther than that. In an earlier work, he states flatly that these objects are fossils, and that they have bacterial structures inside them" Which is pretty much exactly how I remembered it.

Yes. It is indeed a ludicrous number and is unsupported by anything other than recursion, is what a gaming journalist has reported rather than having an official EA release, implies that ME2 sold a cool 3 times the number of ME1, and that EA deliberately underestimated sales in a legal document by the small matter of 5 million copies and underestimated shipped items by 4.6 million. That's roughly $100 million of missing income. Whereas, typing in 6.6 instead of 1.6... Sheesh, the 6.6 million doesn't tally remotely with greylord's own quoted figures which he's been making so much of without actually providing any evidence for. He should have taken option 4. In any case this this is boring. ME2 sold fine, even if not as well as its fans would like. On the other hand, seeing the user ratings for DA2 on metacritic is rather interesting.