Zoraptor

The problem with flat taxes and other such 'fair' ideas such as universal Sales Tax/ GST/ VAT is that the costs of living are definitively not flat. Someone on a very low wage has to pay far more of their wage proportionately for essentials and indeed will spend almost all their money every week. Most democratic governments are depressingly short sighted economically. Pay down debt- most expensive first- in the good times so you don't have to sweat the deficits in the bad times. It's hardly rocket science that running deficits in the good times and the bad times is going to lead to problems. It doesn't always mean higher rates- Ireland's and Iceland's actually dropped after getting a downgrade, according to the beeb- though I pretty much agree that it will ultimately in this case despite the other two agencies not downgrading. It seems to really depends on whether it has been expected and factored in previously.

The AR comment is probably fair as pretty much everyone would regard the BAR as a light machine gun rather than an assault rifle and certainly in the modern sense it was far too heavy to be an assault rifle- though one variant (Colt Monitor) certainly comes close wiki suggests it was never used by any military and was still heavier than the StG. The other claim there is suspect though, as the US invented a genuine rocket launched AT weapon (bazooka; copied by the germans as the panzerschreck) first and you'd have to do some funky reasoning to qualify the panzerfaust since it was basically a single use rifle grenade. Now I feel an urge to reinstall Close Combat 2.

They certainly expected people to have played the first game and read the (in-game) books to fully understand the story. But there wasn't that much background that was really needed- perhaps as little as knowing of Brenna alone since 'warring kingdoms of the north fight off powerful empire' largely sets the scene of how the northern kingdoms relate to each other and how they relate to Nilfgard. Most of the characters* are pretty well introduced and developed in game. *Radovid excepted, knowing the background from TW1 definitely helps there.

And the second largest is?

Or change your settings so referrer info is not sent.

He had more than 1 gun (3, iirc, with the other two being 9mm handguns) so reloading was far less an issue. In any case he does not have to deal with hundreds of people looking to kill him. This is not a United 93 type situation where a largish group of people have a long time to deliberate and come to terms with it being us vs them/ him, to the death; and that vs guys with boxcutters. This is a situation where a 'policeman' gathers a bunch of teenagers, and a few adults, together then pulls an assault rifle and opens fire. He doesn't have to deal with hundreds of people, he has to deal with the very small proportion who react to this- slightly unusual- situation by deciding to spontaneously, and uncoordinatedly, charge him. Once they are gone everyone else is- basically- irrelevant since they're in too small groups and far, far too panicked. I'm sure most people think/ hope that they would be the hero who charges the guy with an M14 and takes him out, Arnie style; it's an easy dream to have while sitting in the warm and comfortable glow of a monitor, drinking a coffee and eating a scone.

see, it is good that we spoke up. this way we can see that you clear not know what whitewashing is and that you were, once again, talking out your kiester. Heh. One suspects that were it a Russian history book glossing over Stalin in such a way the attitude would be... somewhat different, especially given the reaction whenever LoF did his not-whitewashing here.

That doesn't really explain why only EA games are pulled, considering that other games do the same thing (see Dirt 3). Don't really know enough about dirt 3 to comment, except to say that at least one other GFWL game whose name escapes me has had a 'buy dlc from steam' button patched in to it. At a guess I would suggest they have a grace period at least until a standard patching cycle is completed, especially so if GFWL still charges for certifying patches.

Rather round the wrong way. Steam wants all DLC for games sold on it to be available 'native' on Steam, so that they can get their cut. Other DD channels aren't effected, only the one which wants compulsory DLC distribution rights. Or in other words it's a specific, and specifically, Steam TOS condition causing the problem, and specific Steam action to remove EA's games. Stick Steam DA2 key into Origin, purchase DLC, problem solved. Next problem to work on, having terrible taste in games (ahahaha).

Ice is black!!! Hitman is using Just For Men!!! Meltdown is a ginger!!! Game is ruined!!! Hope they keep Ira's voice actor, at least!!! I hear Steroid is now German (and/or Russian)!!! I'm so glad it's real time, turn based was only used in the past because old computers suck!!! Looks good for a Wii exclusive!!! Kinect waggle action in JA, awesome!!! One of those is serious.

There was also (presuming the specialist teams wear different gear from default police) the issue of having a bunch of uniformed police running around chasing someone who was also wearing a police uniform. The potential for friendly fire either from other police or from the specialists when they turned up would be very high under those circumstances. And I'd guess that if someone in a police uniform had been shooting at me (and apparently gathering groups around him under the pretense of protecting them) I'd not be quick to trust anyone wearing that uniform in the immediate aftermath.

Ever heard of Ernst Rohm? Hermann Goring was hardly 'conventional' either, though I've never actually checked* whether the cross dressing and such was allied propaganda. But most will take the view that Hitler espoused the 'canon' nazi line on gays which was pretty much the same view he had on everything he found distasteful. *Actually, for all I know Rohm may not have been gay either and it all may have been Hitlerian anti SA slander.

I dunno, codex GD has pretty much convinced me that behind every vocal nazi on the internet there's a tender, repressed and misunderstood soul who just needs to find the right man/ woman to let their real self show.

You defititely should get System Shock Portable then, it's very marginally more complicated then the straight DOSbox versions of MoO and XCOM I have from GG but that's because it's more flexible. Couple of clicks and you're in and I've had no problems on either xp/32 or win7/64.

Is that some kind of wrapper that allows the game to run on modern systems? Or is that a new (modded) version of the actual game? Wrapper basically along with some utilities for sound and the like, similar to the MoO/ XCOM DOSBox versions (all of which work fine on Windows 7/64 for me). There are also resolution increasing and key binding mods- not sure if they're integrated with it now or just compatible with it- to further enhance the experience, the version I have is around three years old. Its legality is a bit unclear, LGS allowed downloads of the SS1 iso prior to their closure (I got it from TTLG back in 2000, before it melted their bandwidth) so it's probably OK until whoever the rights holder is sends a cease and desist, which would probably be a precursor to it being put on GOG anyway.

You can get Xcom off steam, so it's likely legality that's stopping that. You can get it anywhere that isn't GOG, which is why GOG not having it is pretty stupid. And for System Shock there's System Shock Portable.

Whoah, Francis Urquhart. Verily you are a poster of impeccable taste.

Yeah volo, and when Greg and Ray talk about 10 million sales for Bioware titles they mean in the first month too. Wow, at best estimate DA2 was a failure by a factor of 5! At best estimate (your figures) DS3 was a failure by a factor of 2.5!! DS3 is thus twice as successful as DA2!!! FACT!!!! :honourblade: Haven't played any DS game personally and have zero intention of doing so. Open to the possibility that DS sold millions too, shame you don't have a single actual bit of evidence to support it (deferred kudos to whoever dug up the sales charts, shame they don't have numbers).

I'd like some proof that DS sold 'millions'. Yeah, f(v)olorn hope on anything other than roofles on that one. Alpha Protocol is still owned by Sega so far as I know.

Hey, Squeenix at lkeast gets credit for not saying that if Beethoven were alive today he'd be Britney Spears which puts them a bit ahead of 2k on the irrelevant IP resurrection stakes.

The Daily Mail (AKA, Daily Fail) is a garbage tabloid, though it is better than the Sun. I think it's still owned by the same family who gave it a pro-fascist slant prior to WW2, but I'm not 100% sure on that. It's certainly not Murdoch owned.

I thought the reason many PS3 games perform relatively poorly is because very few programmers have really taken advantage of Cell with it being relatively easy to do an OK job but far more difficult (especially for a multi platform release) to do a well optimised one. I don't think it's an accident that you cited Killzone 3 which is a PS3 exclusive and hence will have been built more or less ground up for cell. ARM's great, but I couldn't see anyone going that route for a mainline console, yet. And given that both Nintendo and Sony use ARM in their portables going for them might not be good for 'variation'.

Apparently the UK does have 'public good' exceptions for some crimes- that's how they justified blagging Gordon Brown's bank details. I don't think (well, hope that) good journalism won't be effected. Especially since this whole kerfuffle kicking off is largely the result of some good investigative work by a Grauniad journalist and as otherwise Mr PI's diary probably would have sat gathering dust in the Met archives forever.

Yeah, and germans impaled Belgian babies on their helmet spikes in WW1, Iraqis turfed babies out of incubators in Kuwait etc etc. There's no evidence for the accusation, and that's pretty much a direct quote of the actual UN official on the ground investigating, Cherif Bassiouni. The main problem with citing Gaddafi being a nasty guy as a reason for intervention is that most of the Transitional Council guys (all except two, iirc) had been senior members of Gaddafi's government. Hardly a good indication that they'll lead a glorious pluralist democracy. Plus they've done some fairly unpleasant things themselves (murdering black africans, for example) Part of the Libyan people. Whatever the west may say (and fairly obviously thought) he enjoys a great deal of popular support in many areas of Libya, or he wouldn't still be in power. Not really. It ain't similar militarily but tribe vs tribe in Libya ain't fundamentally much different from Tajikh/ Hezara/ Persian/ Pashtun in Afghanistan or Kurd/ Shiite/ Sunni in Iraq. Taking sides in such things makes a mess in even the best of circumstances.

I was going to say that the Kanye West/ Ray Charles analogy was one of the most vapid things I've ever read but on reflection it's not 100% rubbish. RC will probably still be well known and respected in ten years while Kanye will likely be a footnote in the great morass of disposable stars so there may actually be something valid in the comparison since that's exactly what it looks like will happen to X-COM vs XCOM. More likely they'll just make the NextBox a fixed/ closed hardware PC running a cut down win8 variant. Give them a chance to leverage the bits of the xbox which actually make money (licensing, Live, streaming) while largely avoiding the parts that have lost money hugely (hardware research, production, development) and may significantly reduce the horrendous reliability issues the 360's custom hardware has had.