Zoraptor

You can't tell that much, partly because there have apparently been several revisions with seemingly mutually exclusive stuff included and it's unclear which bits belong to which revision, and there just isn't that much stuff there- it only covers most of Saudi and Rome and even including the synth stuff is only ~350MB of sound. The main things seem to be: (1) Westridge is your partner originally. He dies at the end of the Saudi Missions after the hostage rescue/ skydiving (?), you are blamed and go off after one of the hostages (Parker) invoking Alpha Protocol along the way (2) Mina is not your handler though she does seem to be mentioned as a sort of secretary, one of Westridge's old contacts Uli Boo(l)i (she is voiced by Grey DeLisle; Boo(l)i spelled with and without the 'l' in various file names) is. (3) After catching Parker (he dies? disappears? after) you have to get something (a statue with files hidden in it?) off Madison in the museum. It all culminates in a hostage situation at Pompeii with Madison vs tourists stuck in a bus. D'Arcy tries to arrest you in Rome with some pretty amusing dialogue "which one of your daddies was mummy? Maverick or Iceman?" (4) The main bad guy for Rome is still Marburg. Leland is mentioned but appears to not be the CEO of Halbech- the original CEO's name is mentioned in a still used news clip at the end of the game (though the captions read Leland). There are a few other minor bits and pieces: the G22 base in Taiwan was a Vodka factory for ?someone? but there's basically nothing much there for Taiwan or Moskva. Almost all the mission maps seem to have been retasked rather than redone

Which figures are these? http://www.gamespot.com/news/6279895.html?...mp;subj=6279895 Short: 75% of people did not download any digital content whatsoever, 15% downloaded via PC and 6% via a console (rest via other means eg cellphone). Probably US only being based on NPD though there's no strong reason to think other areas would be significantly different except less in areas with bad internet.

Last figures I saw had the vast majority of gamers not purchasing DLC, so it can't be too popular. Nice high margin for company beancounters though.

A lot of the old VO stuff- almost all of it from Saudi and Rome, less from other places- is still on the DVD and can be extracted via oggextract; eg ap01_b01 is a lot of VO for the hostage rescue mission (changed into the Saudi mission where you get into the helicopter at the end); rp05_d01_darcy has a bunch of D'Arcy interaction from him trying to apprehend Mike in Rome. There's a lot of synth voiced stuff too. No transcripts though. Presumably the reason for the change was that they thought a serious business Syriana style game would not sell and that changing to a more traditionally video game friendly genre would.

Being a grand standing contrarian with an agenda (a description I largely agree with) and being a hero are not mutually exclusive- that's a fair description of Churchill in 1938, for example. Most of Assange's really strong supporters are liberals (non-US meaning) which is in theory neither left nor right wing and includes, at least theoretically, Anarchists (left wing) and Libertarians (right wing). Ron Paul* can hardly be described as left wing yet he is one of the few US politicians to offer support (or, at least, 'support') to WL. *I like Ron Paul, he's one of the very few politicians anywhere who gives a good simulation of having actual principles instead of a shifting set of sound bites designed to get votes.

Informants get killed, it's an occupational hazard. It's happened before WL, it'll happen long long after. If there were any compelling evidence that WL was causing them then the PR people would be all over it. As I pointed out the previous time this came up the NATO losses have actually dropped significantly by monthly year to year comparison, despite the supposed treasure trove of the WL releases, so they cannot be that bad. Afghanistan is a country in the throes of a significant insurgency, has a government and armed forces/ law enforcement riddled with both corruption and active Taleban collaborators/ agents and the Taleban has an enormous number of connections into communities. Evidence suggests strongly that the majority of Taleban fighters are effectively mercenaries rather than ideologues- if you're going to accept a few dollars to get shot up by NATO you're... very likely going to accept a few dollars to say that you saw Ahmad talking to the Americans just before they raided that safe house in Kandahar, let alone the various Afghan military and police people or translators who will be in the know. That's primarily how they get their information, by leveraging their local knowledge and contacts. Not by taking their netbook to the local wifi hotspot in Kabul to trawl through x0,000 internet documents that are almost entirely irrelevant.

Assange not wanting his whereabouts published is ironic. The danger to him apparently being sufficient to be a factor in refusing bail but not enough to warrant suppressing his address is ironic. People who were up in arms about poor baby informants being put in danger being smug about Assange being put in danger is also ironic- if you really believed your positions you would condemn both as being dangerous and not change positions based on personal animus towards an individual. I don't have any great problem with either as I don't think Assange is in greater danger by it being published- there is basically zero chance of it not becoming public knowledge whether suppressed or not. I do have a problem with the judge being inconsistent as it suggests bias, and poor and inconsistent judgement (ohoho). I do have a problem with the prosecution because if even half the stuff written is true then there should be no chance of conviction, as the original prosecutor basically admitted by dropping the original charges. As for the rest- you cannot run around saying wikileaks is both a horrible breach of security that will bring about the downfall of western civilisation/ kill countless innocent informants and say that none of the stuff is new/ significant and that nobody has died. They're mutually exclusive positions. Alternating the positions and expecting people to believe both simultaneously is also ironic. Probably the person to come best out of the whole thing is Gates who has been almost completely consistent that while some stuff has not been helpful it really isn't as big a deal as Lieberman and the rest of the World Is Ending brigade are making out. Oh dear, embarrassed on the internet. How ever does one survive?

Very Icewind Dale-ish looking style, which is a good thing. Can't really tell much from concept art though.

. Ah irony, it's more infectious than 'flu.

I'd say that the top level minigames are barely feasible. If you aren't good at them to start with they'd be nigh impossible even with sabotage and the time increasing implants. Taiwan's do seem to be more difficult for some reason. Save games can be hacked (there may be a proper editor somewhere, don't know) to change stats/ AP. I think that there is also a config file determining AP gain too, though I'm not 100% on that.

Yeah, I know. It was an attempt at a meta-ironic illustration (take my opinions as fact! well actually my opinions aren't...) than a serious statement. On reflection I should have made it a bit clearer- generally anything over the top I write isn't just hyperbole.

OK... There ain't relevant facts there, or at least none that support you. There are opinions. Mr Double-Barreled doesn't like Assange = fact. Mr D-B says Assange ~ dictator, fact. But this does not, in fact, make Assange a dictator in the same way as any accusation cannot be used as proof that the content of the accusation is true. Mr D-B admits that- in fact- he resigned himself rather than being; hung drawn and quartered? shot in a Polish forest? delicately flayed and his skin used as a throw rug at Assange's lavish London digs? having... an appeal hearing in a couple of days? Golly, you're not going to make Which Dictator magazine's cover with form like that Julian. I'm fairly sure it isn't the first time two people who have worked together have fallen out and it won't be the last. Taking the word of one as gospel as to whose fault it is is seldom a good way of determining the actual facts. Personally? That Mr D-B waited until he was sure Assange simply could not make any reply due to being held incommunicado at Her Majesty's Pleasure does not speak very highly of his integrity, courage or being a technical member of phylum Chordata.

Hmm. Just out of interest, can anyone remind me what the primary exports of the Bedouin Arab nations (SA, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, UAE) is? I'm having a bit of a blank.

Heh, fact. Like an awful lot of 'facts' that is actually an opinion. You are being rather naive; though the ingenious use of and invocation of emotes like 'democracy' and 'dictatorship' indicate a good future in the world of PR... Call it what it is- a self appointed committee- and the reaction is rather different. Not really much different from a self appointed dictatorship whether it's Assange or plain old Joe Random with secrets arbitrarily deciding they should be leaked, except that turning something into a committee is a prime way of making sure that nothing ever gets done. Or in other words, it's still pointless and if you have quis custodes ipsos custodiet concerns, per Wals, then a self appointed politburo (<-My try for a career in PR) is not going to alleviate them.

Seems utterly pointless. You can already leak direct to the papers. You can already leak indirect to the papers. Can't think of it having a single use.

Shrug. The biggest hint that it really isn't that important (apart from the information almost all being publically available, and generally much more specific too) is that the US itself didn't classify the information particularly highly. Manning didn't have access to the really juicy stuff at all. It's still a mistake for WL to publish it. There's only a marginal need to know (after all, it is almost all information available already) and its primary effect has been to give ammunition to anti WL people. Collusion between the US, Ukraine and Kenya to subvert arms regulations wrt to South Sudan is a far more relevant and better use for the leaks, even if it too was strongly suspected prior.

No, we really shouldn't. The whole point of a justice system is to avoid, so far as possible, emotion and rushes to judgement and to use, so far as possible, logic and proof in a considered manner.

It's stupid too because an R18 rating does not mean anything goes. We've 'always' had an R18 rating and (a few) games get banned outright here, Manhunt being perhaps the most well known.

Nah, that list is rubbish- it's basically diplomatic make work. Most of the things there are of such huge strategic significance that their locations are matters of public record and can be found by anyone with any inclination. Better ban Snakes on a Plane PDQ if the loss of an Ockeronian antivenin facility is really going to do serious damage to the US, don't want those terrorists getting bright ideas from that. Best ban Google Earth as well, and paper maps, just to be safe and as they show important buildings and locations. Hmm, maybe a mod had better delete this post too in case a terrorist reads it and gets ideas... And you're still going to get more terrorist kudos by blowing up a McDonalds than going to Congo to try and destroy a Coltain mine.

It would be holy crap, if true, but those aren't quite the accurate facts... It's actually worse than that. The new ACs will be launched/ delivered relatively soon (~2 years or so for the first one, IIRC) but will only have aircraft bought for them in around a decades time. Prior to that the ACs will be basically helicopter carriers. Overall it's a bit like building tanks then running out of money to give them a main gun so having some highly expensive mobile machine gun nests until the Big Cannons are delivered a decade later. If you go by the length of time the last batch of British ACs lasted (~30 years) they will be spending a quarter+ of their active service life without aircraft.

I think the general consensus was that those things were controlled by the exe and not subject to easy manipulation, unfortunately. IIRC there are a few things possible to make it easier such as shortening the repeat input time for the keyboard string movement but that was all.

Interesting point. Wasn't Mendel a monk? Interesting (?) fact: Mendel almost certainly cheated and fudged his results. (Forgivable, as he was right. But his results were far too consistently good to be genuine experimental results)

It was a bit of a dichotomy. On one hand Japan had been on an extremely driven mission of westernisation/ modernisation for roughly a century while on the other she was still very strongly nationalist and had a national cult of superiority and manifest destiny to rival any western country. But pretty much every western country of that time had those characteristics too to a greater or lesser extent- Belgium's colonial record in the Kongo is about as bad as Japan's in China, for example.