pmp10

Wow. And here I thought my opinion on dragon age was low. Why do you play Bioware games in the first place?

The important thing is, do you think it will stop if people do nothing? Do you think it's plausible for everyone to not react? If not, is it still a productive thing to allow it in some capacity? You honestly think doing something will stop it? Of course. People threatened by bans suspensions and ostracization are perfectly manageable and can be made to obey social standards that you set. But it does takes continuous action and consequency which is more than most devs are willing to do.

The problem has never been pandering to the biases but pretending that this is real history that is coming out of Hollywood. I never saw anything wrong with a bit of historical fiction but insisting those events have a solid grounding in reality is not just insulting but borders on arrogance.

I'd be much more sorry for developer in question if they weren't partially responsible for this situation. Those standards were set over many years of competitive gaming but only now they are shocked that their target audience behaves badly? At least fess up that while even developers on f2p games were trying to somehow police the community you simply refused to do bugger-all. You can't fix the problem if you don't recognize the mistakes you have made.

Bleed. A great little indie action game. The only problem is that with checkpoints it's too short.

What is a militant atheist? Do they go door to door and say "Have you welcomed science into your life?" Or wave guns at you telling you not to pray? You start by calling the beliefs of others 'The root of all evil'. And it only gets worse from there - trust me. Trying to discuss papacy/crusades or the inquisition is difficult enough even in historical circles. Doing so on the internet almost invariably ends with invasion of someone keen to remind us how terrible they are/were.

Those recent outbursts are just spill-overs from the 4chan/anonymous fighting removal of some compromising videos from the web. That and scientology aggressively combats it's opponents unlike most other religions that are just punching-bags for militant atheists.

Israel just approved deployment of two more Egyptian battalions into Sinai. This is much more than a few policemen making a PR show. Whether they are there to stay is another matter. No matter how insignificant Hamas has been recently they still rule just across the border. Desperate people are always dangerous.

I understand what you mean about future and potential but it's important to recognize that nuclear has much more issues that just scared public or fanatical environmentalists. In fact in US it was nuclear industry itself that underestimated the costs of nuclear power from next generation reactors about seventh-fold.

Got Devil May Cry 3&4 bundle just for 7 euro. Normally I don't double-dip but that series has always been my guilty pleasure. And people looking for STALKER games should take a look at gamersgate since the whole collection is dirt cheap there right now. Just keep in mind that those versions do come with DRM.

Apparently Egypt is cracking down on extremists smuggling into Gaza. You'd think they have enough problems with MB protesters but now they are aiming to destabilize Hamas. If they overreach we may indeed end up with a second Syria.

I don't think this is really true actually. I believe Aristotle showed that the world was round in the Classical era. It wasn't so much that people felt the Earth was flat and that's why Columbus was crazy. It was more that they didn't believe a trip to India would really be feasible. Didn't the church supposedly disagree with Columbus on his calculations of the earths size? I recall someone telling me they told him that he'd made it too small or something like that. If true then it means they were correct incredibly enough. If you mean the scientific advisors to Spanish crown then yes - they were far closer to the real size of earth than Columbus. Columbus had to twist things a lot to prove he could make his voyage and IIRC his argument was that earth was pear-shaped so he could still make it by charting the correct route.

Since nuclear industry is utterly state-dependent it matters a great deal what people at the top think. And I really hope you don't mean that "earth is flat" Columbus nonsense made up by hollywood.

Support for Tribes Ascend unofficially dropped. I rarely have seen developer botch such a promising concept.

The price argument is hard fought all over the internet and I'm sure we won't solve it here. The problems with nuclear are the enormous investment costs/time and adherence to safety regulations. But the bigger issue may be that it's not flexible enough to cover off-days of renewable sources. A coal/gas plant can always throw more fuel into the burner.

That is by no means clear at this point. In fact in US the "renaissance" met with major setbacks. I don't understand your point. It has met with "setbacks" consisting of protests and sabotage from the same old Luddite faction who then says the project has failed? All I'm saying is that the nuclear future is by no mean certain. Nuclear will be an important energy source in developing world but the west is generally moving towards renewables and fossil-fuels.

Clive Barker’s Undying is on sale. Quite good old FPS for those who missed it back in the day.

That is by no means clear at this point. In fact in US the "renaissance" met with major setbacks.

That's quite a lot of exaggeration. While Germany's 'green now' plans are questionable the sky is certainly not falling on their heads. In fact I'd like to hear about the supposed change of course from a more reliable source than a blog.

Slaves were not the logistical support but the cornerstone of their entire economy. States like ancient Rome/Sparta or more recently southern US states pre-civil war have become utterly dependent on slave labor and were unable to let it go. And to get back on topic: Fracking apparently causes earthquakes.

The slaves matter not because they would sometimes be deployed into battles but because they enabled Sparta to field a massive fully professional army. Every other city-state had to put their men-folk into agriculture and would suffered greatly with prolonged hostilities. That's also why Spartans feared slave-revolts so much. They were a direct challenge to the foundation of their power. That class/military service argument originally ran much further. The theory put forward was that building massive fleets must naturally lead to democracy as it's not possible to keep lower classes fighting otherwise. But then in the Polynesian war Sparta won by building multiple massive fleets and it didn't democratize a single bit.

Hoplites and phalanax in Greece was a middle-class form of warware and it would not lead to democracy. In fact Spartans were arguably the biggest slave-holder in ancient Greece (the subject Messinian hatred for them was said to be such that they would gladly eat them raw). If anything the case made was that it was the fleet that made Athens a democracy as even the poorest male could serve as a rower. And that interpretation brings uncomfortable questions as to our modern practice of democracy. In a world of nuclear warheads, billion dollar stealth fighters what possible use is a citizen to his state? Especially since most of said citizens have long shirked any traditional duties and feel entitled to political rights by the virtue of their birth certificates.

I was agreeing with everything but you lost me at the last two sentences. If R* still feels activities like tennis are what players want how is it any different from the virtual friends circle of GTA4?

I wouldn't worry about that. Even if encrypted communication was easy to crack AI piloting is only a couple of generations away.

New thorium research reactor started in Norway.