Zoraptor

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.

Same place as Tigranes, else I wouldn't have said anything. (Not Kangaroovia, but close)

I'm not aware of any loyalty schemes of that nature operating here (in video game retailing, supermarket loyalty card discounts and similar, sure). Almost all deals are available to any and everyone.

Hey, feel ready to share a picture of your gigantic games library now? No? So on "gaf", if you're a pirate and is honest about it, you get banned, but if you're a pirate and a liar, like you, you're home free? That gaf place sounds lovely. At least a slightly better policy than what we have here. Heh. If you posted the stuff you have on AP at many other developer owned boards (and the manner in which you do so coupled with throwing around "bitter tangents" and "h8rs gonna.." whenever someone has the temerity not to like something that you do) then well, you'd have been banned in some places long ago. So let's just be glad for the relatively enlightened stance here, yes? and not dream dreams of cherrypicking eLaws which suit our unique biases, yes? In any case banning people for admitting piracy is just burying your head in the sand.

Yeah, that's been widely 'known' for a long time. They also use a wide variety of industrial espionage, quasi legal 'pressure' (basically extortion- see BHP) and market manipulations (pretty much started with wool, they worked out that if they kept a large stockpile and were the biggest user then they could set the price at whatever they wanted simply by not buying, digging into their stockpiles and crashing the market whenever they wanted. They could then cheaply replenish their stockpile once the market had crashed...) to get as much of an advantage as possible- but that ain't particularly new info. It's all a bit boring really, though I guess there may be a bit more salacious detail in the memos themselves. I didn't see a single thing that I didn't already know outright or strongly suspect except the story of Ali Khamenei having leukaemia.

I hope there's a bit more to come than the startling and earth shaking revelation that the US spies on friends as well as enemies (everyone does it), Prince Andrew is a bit of a knob (OK, that was a bit surprising, I was expecting it to be another great boon to international relations courtesy of Phil the Greek), Silvio B is a touch dodgy (no doubt Italian readers fell off their chairs at the mere thought) and that radical Sunni Saudi Arabia doesn't like radical Shi'ite Iran. Grauniad, I expected better. C-, improvement needed.

There's a US version (think it's ~the same as the old one but with an installer + readme) and a separate Euro/ RoW/ DD version.