Zoraptor

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.

Drakensang TRoT is finally getting an official English language release rather than being available only in Luxembourg- at least for North American types who don't mind the joys of downloads, and for the cheap cheap preorder price of $18. Gamersgate Impulse (Not yet listed on Steam for those wedded to the Valve) 11 Jan release date officially, the Gamersgate version also seems to be allowing random non North Americans to preorder in some cases.

THQ did not publish CoP, it was (IIRC) bitComposer primarily; outside the CIS where GSC did their own publishing. Most probable reason for the bundling is that CoP has a Loyalty Edition which is cheaper and requires one or the other Stalkers anyway, and presumably Deep Silver doesn't want CS bundled with the others for some reason.

Apparently Ubisoft's PC revenues have halved since they introduced their DRM. It was as a proportion of total revenue so there may be more factors at work (~13% revenue to ~6% could be due to fewer titles, perhaps) but I suspect not the glorious nirvana they expected when they embarked on the whole thing.

Heh. I installed Batman: AA yesterday, though retail not DD. It was a... completely painless experience with zero Live problems. Despite what it said I was not connected to the internet when installing, and haven't been any time I played it, nor did it add a firewall extension and there haven't been any interminable Live update loops while searching out which 360 site you need to find and log into to change settings. If Bethesda had stuck with Live I'd probably have gone out and bought FONV already instead of getting it second hand for console. I'm more peeved about the game's handling of graphics options (16:9 resolution on my 16:10 monitor :raeg::raeg::raeg:) than the key mapping as the control scheme is at least pretty standard.

The other question is whether the money is there for a sequel. If Obsidian want to do it and if any rights issues can be sorted out there is still the question of who will pay the x million required for development. I doubt Obsidian themselves have the required money sitting around, perhaps unless it were to be some sort of low budget in house (Onyx based) game for Live/ PSN/ PCDD.

I'll probably get TWitcher2 and Crusader Kings 2, assuming it makes 2k11. Can't think of any other games I'm likely to get without significant discounts. So far as I can remember I only bought one full price game this year.

no insult was intended, it's a complicated subject difficult to get any nuance without ending up looking like (and being the length of) a wikipedia article or using more parentheticals than is healthy. I didn't actually say all Croats supported the nazis- not even all Germans supported the nazis, after all- but that the Croat Ustache did (ie, puppet Croatia), and I did name check the most prominent anti nazi Croat which was one more anti nazi Croat than Serb. However, it is indisputable that the Croats had a puppet state which contributed significant forces to the axis, formal, volunteer and anti partisan. They certainly contributed far more than Mihailovic's lot* ever did to the German cause and it is certainly true that the Croat regime was the primary pro nazi force in Yugoslavia in WW2 by a large margin. While genuinely fascist/ pro nazi Serb forces did exist they were not comparable in size or effect to their Croat equivalents. Please take the role of all ethnicities in the partisans as acknowledged- but when it comes right down to it and for the purposes of what WoD said the simple fact is that Croatia was formally on the side of the axis. As for the Leopards, that was not to be taken seriously. So far as I am aware Croatia has no Leopard tanks now. It was a flippant reference to the rumours prevalent at the time which I found amusing as they were apparently sparked by someone painting the word 'Leopard' on the side of their ?T55? (T34, apparently, per google) tank. *Which as you noted was far more internecine anti communist/ partisan than it was ever pro German. Not that Mihailovic was a 'good guy' by any stretch and in a choice of him and his Serb nationalism or Tito then Tito was a far better result.

I'd say that Tito-> is already a long-enough chunk of time for the present discussion. If you take Tito -> kick off of Yugoslav Wars that's still only a decade or so; and relations were certainly not negative in the USSR/ Iran/ DPRK vs USA mold until well into the 90s. So long as the USSR was a threat- until 1990, basically- keeping the Yugoslavs on side (/off their side) was pretty important to the west as it deprived the soviets of ports on the Med and left their underbelly more vulnerable, while providing passive support to Greece. Relations have been 'strained' for the past fifteen years or so? No kidding, that's a consequence of bombing a country and arbitrarily chopping bits off to satisfy Tony Blair's Messiah Complex. If they wanted to intervene they should have done so early, in Bosnia, and put a lid on the whole thing as quickly as possible.

That's... fairly accurate, arguably. It's only really post Tito and more especially post cold war that there were any problems. The Serbs were allies in WW2 and almost exclusively anti-German (in sharp contrast to the Croat Ustache, well remembered by the Germans as the Croats mysteriously ended up with a bunch of Leopard tanks despite the supposed arms embargo in the 90s war; and one Josip Broz notwithstanding), plus Tito was relatively friendly despite both being communist and the historical religious and cultural bonds with the Russians. I wouldn't quite go so far as WoD but it certainly ain't indefensible. Neither's labeling the KLA as muslim terrorists- it certainly was a muslim terrorist organisation as much as, say, the IRA was a catholic terrorist one.