Zoraptor

I suppose 'can' could also be intended as 'canis' (dog), though how that would fit in context... I think that might be reading a bit too much into it- the motto isn't 'proper' latin as 'can' doesn't exist in latin, so making an assignation of tense or person based on proper latin construction is a bit... tenuous, even if correct linguistically. It might even be meant as a noun (~journey) rather than a verb. It would be helpful if we knew what the first word(s) in the motto are. I suspect the motto is intended as something similar to Terry Pratchett's latin mottos (nil illigitimo carborundum, non temeris messor, candela est ars enixa, etcetera) ie not 'properly' latinate but a bit of a "don't fear the reaper", haha, type thing.

At a guess, can should be possum/ potere ( =able to/ can in english), giving "[something] Can Not be stopped". It ain't great latin, in any case.

So far as I can see the possibilities are: 1) It actually isn't delayed and the release date change is due to ??? (eg rumour cascade everyone assumes [site] has the good oil and changes date when in fact [site] made a 06/10 -- 10/06 type typo, or just added a placeholder)- Moderately likely, especially as some very major sites still list an October release. If Sega's silence stretches into the new week then (2) becomes more likely. 2) It is delayed due to one or more of: bugs, content additions, missed release window, concern with competition, unavailability of fabrication plants, strategic financial reasons, ie generally 'internal' reasons. 2a) It is delayed due to console certification or other 'rating' issues 3) It is being canceled (highly unlikely), onsold (may be possible, though it seems unlikely, Sega US does have some fairly major financial problems though) or entering an Aliens: Colonial Marines type holding pattern (hopefully not and seems unlikely) Basically it's all speculation at this stage. But certainly, and importantly, a cancellation seems very unlikely. I'd personally be very surprised at an eight month delay as well.

Heh, I trawl TESS frequently, so I know who has the registration. I was thinking of the clause thing, basically, whereby if Sega failed to live up to its obligations the IP would revert (or have the option to be bought out by another publisher). It certainly isn't unheard of for companies to have TMs of properties registered that they don't own in any absolute sense, see Baldur's Gate for an example-- it clearly says on the box that WOTC owns the TM, but check on TESS and you get it being owned by IPLY and Bioware at various times, and only now that the legal shenanigans have been sorted is it actually listed as held by WOTC.

Why? It just seems rather convenient to say so, especially given that it supports your position. I'm not an expert on how to run a corporation by any means, so if you could explain it that'd be awesome. Especially given he was buying stuff he had a stake in, and given that average joe gamer can go "Hmmm, that looks fishy," it's seems rather suspect to then assume that the fat cats at EA wouldn't also think the same thing, especially given that it's THEIR money. You're going to have to do better than say that it's rare for a CEO that was raided to have his first deal turned down. Besides, I'm not privy to what deals Riccietello has suggested, so I couldn't even definitively state that this was his first one. I'm not by any means an expert on how to run corporations. However, if you hire an expert in any field you usually do so to take his advice, not to ignore it. It's pretty much the same situation, if you bring in a CEO to fix your company and he says 'do this' then you will, by and large do exactly that, especially if he's new in the job. Else what's the point of hiring them in the first place? Plus you'd end up with a (potentially) very annoyed new employee if you ignore them.

If Riccitiello had sold to EA for less than the 300$m originally paid he would likely have been sued, not less than it was actually sold for- in the Extreme case, selling from one company he was running to the one he was leaving for for, say, $5 and a stick of gum would almost certainly be outright fraudulent. That's what I was talking about, there was never suggestion that it would be resold for less than was paid for it. It's also rather rare to headhunt a new CEO then turn down the first deal he suggests, especially in the time before the financial crisis- I'd suspect that if he suggested similar now/ was hired now it would be looked at a lot more closely. As it stands, the doubling of the valuation appears to be almost solely on the back of TOR- else you're spending top dollar for a studio releasing one decently profitable AAA title every 18 months to two years. While TOR's a decent bet for success (and WoW like numbers would theoretically mean $1bn profit/yr to share) the market is littered with the corpses and or barely animated zombies of failed MMO 'decent bets', which cost huge amounts to develop too- far more than any standard game which doesn't have 'Grand Theft' or similar in its title.

Both those buyouts were by the same person though- John Riccitiello- just wearing different hats. He's hardly going to sell (himself, effectively) Bioware for less than he paid for it originally, if for no other reason than he'd get sued by Elevation Partners if he did so. Bioware is overvalued as it stands- you can, after all, work out their income streams roughly from their sales and compare that to other companies'. The big question being how SWTOR performs, if it's a genuine WoW killer then 750mUSD for Bioware alone would be a steal.

If it is an October 6th release we ought to get a gold announcement soon- that's only a little more than two weeks away.

I haven't followed Beth's history, but I know they've previously sued to kill the P&P version of Fallout (authorised by iply prior to selling the IP to Zenimax), threatened to sue replacement docs for carrying their games' manuals and threatened abandonware sites for carrying their old games. Not that they aren't necessarily justified- the replacement docs and abandonware ones are certainly well within their rights- but they are pretty litigious for their size.

If you're having performance problems then turn it off- it has a far larger effect on frame rate than is really justified, especially on lower end systems.

Strangely, those were the two things I thought were worst about ME. Though to be fair I thought the gameplay wasn't really bad per se- just tending towards formulaic and repetitive. OTOH I thought the atmosphere and immersion was borderline awful.

Clarifying, really, with a drop of disagreement Heh. Not that I disagree in a general sense but... In this case it wasn't actually the communists doing that. It was the standard-moderate-left-wing concensus-don't-rock-the-boat guy (Largo Caballero) who instigated the unofficial embargoes against the anarchists really early on in things, prior to his removal by the commies.

He only specifically mentions two industries- agriculture and woodworking- and the efficiency of woodworking increased too. That's certainly industrial (specifically he mentions the closing of lots of small workshops in favour of larger ones with more modern equipment). He also says that drops in industrial output were generally related to shortage of raw materials/ money, collapse of domestic demand, unofficial embargoes including by the Republican government itself (he cites the example of them giving uniform contracts overseas rather than to anarchist run textile factories), the Fascists gaining control of the Pyrenees' dams and thus most of Catalunya's electricity, and having a large proportion of workers fighting at the front or otherwise involved in war industries. OTOH Beevor does seem rather an Orwell fan, and he certainly had a strong admiration for the Anarchists- so there might be some bias at work. Overall though, he's fairly convincing. Kind of. More like a village than a family though (in the most 'advanced' forms there were far more people per group than we'd think of as 'family').

This is very arguable- most 'primitive' human groups had broadly patriarchal and authoritarian systems with no concept of individual property. Accepted, it isn't human nature now. That's incorrect, the anarcho-syndicalists actually increased production despite the war, despite the implosion of almost all other industries, and despite the outright animosity of the communists and others within Republican Spain (since I had Beevor 2m away you even get a ref: Josep Maria Bracall "Les collectivizatcions" in Anna Salles (ed.) Documents 1931-39).

Sadly, that's the best 'broadband' available here- theoretically it is actually a 3.2mbps connection...

I presume this is in comparison with SecuROM? If so, SecuROM does not install spyware and installs at exactly the same level as other standard programs, including the Steam client. Steam dials the mothership every time you log in, verify or download games, and is as likely to be 'spyware' as SecuROM is- ie you have no idea what information is being sent in either case, the difference being that while Steam's is persistent monitoring SecuROM does it once. Like having a video camera in the room (Steam) vs having someone take a picture once (SecuROM). OK. But how is this better than other digital distributions (yes, Purkake's point about range can be conceded, Steam has more titles available)- you can do the same with GamersGate/ Impulse/ D2D and with GG at least you can do without even installing a client. Is it functionally better than a physical copy (unless strict portability is the prime issue) or other digital distribution systems? On the activation issue, I think it's a stupid system. It generates a lot of tech support overhead and just plain doesn't work. Having said that, for most people it isn't a problem.

Look at the ping on that baby!

I can (and have) do(ne) that with Gamersgate, without having to worry about the vagaries of external clients. Some of which are potentially very nasty- as an example, if I was struck by the bug with Empire: Total War where verifying the DVD install resulted in downloading the entire game off Steam it would have theoretically (as I didn't buy ETW, and I've got my connection set up to stop well before reaching 12GB) cost me $450 (!!) in usage fees. It may seem that I'm ragging on Valve- though I actually have no animosity towards them at all- but that's just because I've yet to see an argument from Steam fans which didn't ultimately boil down to "well, it's Valve isn't it?" as to why it's better than [alternative].

If Steam actually did that (it doesn't) it would be, well, exactly what people rant about SecuROM for. Steam doesn't get criticised as much because of the built in Valve fanbo^H^H^H^H fanbase but don't kid yourself, in every substantive measure it's as bad if not worse than activation SecuROM. Offline mode doesn't work by design, as it "spontaneously" reverts to online mode at various times, and won't let you reactivate offline mode until you've redialed the mothership.

There is a version which is confirmed as not having SecuROM- the Steam one (maybe the Gamersgate or D2D versions too, though I've never seen it confirmed for them) Yeah, if you hate intrusive DRM then logically you loathe Steam. Amazing how many people seem to think just because it's Valve and they made omghalflifebestgameeverexcepthalflife2!!!! it somehow isn't intrusive though.

Yes. E: TW has some, at least.

It most definitely will be Games for Windows, it's there on the box. Games for Windows Live on the other hand seems unlikely (and I second, third.. googleplexth, the "I ****ing hope not" sentiment) since it isn't on the box. Whether no Live means no achievements at all or whether it just means they cannot be tied to a profile I have no idea.

Yes, mitigating in the sense that given the aggravating internal ethnic and external political factors, and lack of external support pretty much anything better than a Bosnia style disintegration is an achievement, and their elections are at least reasonably fair. I saw the DPRK thread. The start was quite good, the problem was with not knowing when to stop, remaining consistent and picking an inherently hard sell. If I were trying to 'defend' communism I would have picked something inherently more palatable like 'what would have happened if Trotsky rather than Stalin had succeeded Lenin?' and immediately shoved Stalin, Mao etc into the monomaniac-taking-advantage-of-communism basket. Then again, I'm no great fan of communism- though it'd be a great idea if people were robots or termites. Overall f I were looking for an alternative I'd far rather defend one of the anarcho-socialist/ syndicalist systems as in Kibbutz or Catalunya 1936.

Nepal and many states of India are far better examples of non-totalitarian communist ruled areas. Moldova perhaps too, especially since it has a number of significant mitigating factors for its problems like overt Russian and Romanian interference. Cuba and, especially, Byelorus not so much. One of the biggest problems of democratic communism, or even Chavez style socialism, is that it's far easier and quicker for a right wing government once elected to reverse 'socialist' or 'communist' reforms than it to make those reforms in the first place. LoF really isn't doing this very well, s/he isn't even being consistent in attitude to the Spanish Civil War.