BruceVC

Malc you being cynical again, remember you said you werent going to be as cynical

Yes it is lots of unnecessary drama and outrage and Biden is right The US cant provide the same support to Israel for the Rafah military campaign without a proper humanitarian plan for the Palestinian civilians And despite discussion around this Israel has not provided a satisfactory plan for this so the US must do something like suspending this type of military aid, I dont know how much of difference it will make but its symbolically important

Yes thats all true It doesnt explain much but its not suppose to because they only had 30 seconds. Its not about the policies of the DA Its just another example of a sensationalized political advert but the point is really the overreaction to this advert from ANC which is also a political response Its been in the news the last 2-3 days and some people are literally " outraged " because they think its treasonous and racist Like I mentioned with the ANC grandstanding about taking legal steps because of the flag burning But a flag wasnt burned. Its just a political advert

Did they ever stop?

South Africa is having its national election on 29 May and we in full season of populist and utterly unrealistic campaign promises from numerous political parties that are ubiquitous with the " silly season " reality in any Democracy with different political parties The party I vote for, the DA, released this campaign video of the " South African flag burning " and it received the expected immediate criticism around "racism, treason " and " abhorrent and unpatriotic " comments from the ANC and other political parties The ANC even going as far to say " Sport, Arts and Culture Minister, Zizi Kodwa, is considering taking further steps against the Democratic Alliance over the party's ad depicting the South African flag burning" https://www.enca.com/top-stories/mi...action-against-da-after-flag-burning-campaign Here is the actual advert and its clear most people who are " outraged " haven't watched it or havent bothered to understand its political message In summary the advert doesnt show an actual physical flag being burnt, its a digital AI piece of paper and the " flag" gets restored its a political metaphor about the state of the country under a coalition of the ANC and other parties like the EFF But watch this video and tell me if you think its "treasonous " and legal action needs to be taken against the DA

I am going to do it, I havent forgotten

All business units and companies owned by Microsoft would have an individual yearly target within Microsoft's main financial target they announce at the beginning of the financial year Thats what all listed companies do and that is what is expected they must achieve for investors and shareholders So Bethesda and Obsidian would have a revenue goal they have to achieve and in gaming that would align with revenue sales once a new game is released I cant imagine it would work any other way? So its not really " Microsoft standards " but an expected agreement how all listed companies function and how smaller companies within the group need to deliver on

Fantastic news about your health GD, excellent to hear What a great retirement decision, you always spoke about travelling around the US and seeing the national parks. Now you get to do it in good company with Gwen You should create a blog with a one page story about each park, call it something like " A dogs journey around the gardens of the USA " Those types of tourist and interesting stories are always appreciated

Great read about Gorths gaming journey and its a good initiative to see other peoples stories and experiences

Hurlshot is 100% correct, the best way to ensure Obsidian doesn't get restructured or shutdown is for everyone to buy a copy of any game released by Obsidian We can add it to our Steam\GOG list of " games still to be played "

I never like to hear news about any gaming company closing down. But technically the way listed companies are structured its not shareholders who make the decisions about who gets fired, retrenched or a company within the main business gets restructured\shutdown Its the board who decides this and its normally about the overall sustainability and profitability of the business unit. Microsoft would have millions of different shareholders and almost all shareholders have an expectation of a positive return on the share price which is understandable. No one would buy shares if they didnt increase in value because whats the point if they dont ? And the board of every company manages the shareholder relationship which means they have to ensure that every business unit performs and makes its target Its not unreasonable this type of structure and relationship and Redfall was a bad game. So the main difference between a small development company making a bad game and that same company being part of the larger company like Microsoft is there less appetite for making a bad game because you are expected to deliver on results in the latter example But I also imagine the board would have to consider reputational damage, so you dont just shutdown iconic and prestigious studios like Obsidian or Bethesda over one bad game or one initially badly received game They would balance these things

Great story Gorthfuscious. Such an interesting journey and you have been around since the early days so you have seen things progress and advance to the level of gaming from where we are now

And these are all valid examples but what is the petition expecting to change legally In other words if there is an online gaming service that is losing money is the legislation going to say " you cant shutdown the gaming servers " ? And thats fine but then who is going to pay for the servers to be maintained? Maybe the idea is where the community maintains it like City of Heroes I just think trying to get the state to legislate this type of thing is problematic

I still dont understand what the petition is suppose to achieve, this what the petition website says " Many videogames rely on servers. When these are shut down, games can be left unplayable where no action is taken to remove this dependency. We believe this is effectively robbing customers, leaving them with no recourse to retain their purchases. We have concerns that existing laws and agencies do not effectively solve this problem. Thus we believe government intervention is needed to stop this practice." What if a company goes under, then the online servers will also be shutdown. But whats more relevant is what is an example of what they talking about ? Specifically around what they mean by " When these are shut down, games can be left unplayable"

Yes it makes no sense. It must be because of a specific example and that would be why this petition was created But the UK is famous for these types of well-meaning but mostly pointless examples of outrage, they dont lead to much real change around implementation

Im not sure I understand the objective? What are people expecting, what do they mean by " in a reasonably working state when support ends" Do they mean official patches and fixes and does this include community patches or mods, is that support? Because you can have a bug specific to your PC or mods you loaded and if you dont fix it then you cant finish the game. Its unrealistic to hold the original developers legally responsible for that? They must be talking about a specific game or games that was the foundation of this petition so I wonder what they mean?

I completed EoB1 after about 45 hours, it was a great experience and well worth playing So a couple of comments An Automap feature is a MUST for your average gamer if you serious about completing the game, of course you can make maps manually. A map is critical to completing levels for several reasons that include you find levers and buttons that sometimes open doors or hidden walls that aren't always in the vicinity of where you are but with the automap you can see immediately what a button does I loved how the game is non-linear and you sometimes find keys in different places that you decide what you want to unlock and then you can progress as you want and I didnt explore every level completely The " fast travel " was a brilliant and well done feature. It makes exploration for the stone items worthwhile but its not easy to teleport unless you find specific portals I enjoyed the overall combat mechanics, simple but still entertaining I had an interesting final battle with the beholder Xanathar, initially he decimated me after 3-4 rounds of combat with death spells and fireballs. Then I read some combat tips and I had the Wand of Silivias. But it didnt seem to work where you supposed to push Xanathar back to this spike trap so I adopted my own strategy. I ran to the room with the spike trap and literally fought him by running around the room, attacking him and avoiding his frontal spells. It was hard but eventually effective. I nearly had a crisis because I used a save game when he was down to 50% of health but then my front line fighters got killed and I accidently saved instead of restoring And because you only have 1 save game and load game that meant I was stuck with a party of 3 dead party members and these were the only people who could harm Xanathar. But I ran away and luckily my Cleric was still alive and I had 2 Raise Dead scrolls so I used that to resurrect my fighters, heal and return to the battle and I was able to win and defeat the diabolical Xanathar I am now playing EoB2 and I decided to import my previous party, I have just started and already I can see some improvements like how magical items are identified and multiple save games. Very appreciated change to EoB1 If someone had to ask me " why should I play such an old game like EoB1 when there are all these amazing new games with beautiful graphics and modern features " My answer would be these types of classic games capture the excitement and ambience of dungeon exploration better than any modern game and they always will. Modern games are great but if you want to experience the true thrill of classic D&D exploration you wont find a better way of doing it than from games like EoB And finally it gets a solid 70/100 on the globally respected " BruceVC game rating system "

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-01/saudi-arabia-steps-up-gaza-arrests-as-israel-ties-edge-closer Interesting development, Saudi Arabia is making some positive steps towards supporting Israel. Its sooner than I thought considering the ongoing war in Gaza but geopolitical events in the ME tend to move quickly Im not sure if its Abrahamic Accord revitalization but it may be more about " Saudi Arabia and regional allies like Egypt and Jordan have been alarmed by the trend, fearing that Iran and Islamist groups could exploit the conflict to incite a wave of uprisings, said some of the people, who asked not to be identified due the delicate nature of the matter. Memories of the Arab Spring more than a decade ago remain fresh among regional rulers, who are desperate to avoid a repeat"

You asking an important and relevant question and that is " whats radical about demanding that a university divest from the arms industry " Thats not radical at all and its reasonable. But thats not what the protestors are asking They asking for the Universities to divest from all companies that do business with Israel and a boycott of these companies if these companies continue to do business with Israel or have an Israeli footprint. Its similar to South Africa Apartheid sanctions which were reasonable, understandable and effective But if you think how impractical the students demands really are, just take IT companies that include Microsoft, Amazon, FB or Twitter. The Universities and the students themselves arent going to boycott these products so whats the point of asking for a generalized boycott and divest of all companies? But if they were specific about weapons companies that would be a different story because the Universities can do this

I bought all the Gold Box SSI games on Steam and Im playing Eye of the Beholder 1 as my first game. Im going to spread out when I play these games I played it when it was first released back in 1992 and I still remember certain mechanics like the pressure plates The Gold Box games have the All-Seeing Eye automap built in which is a "must have " feature if you dont have the time for making maps manually which I dont And Im really enjoying it, its very simple but thats the fun of this type of classic dungeon crawler. And of course it uses the D&D ruleset and mechanics which is always a win for me

Its interesting you raise " or that that they were dubbed "outside agitators" when this was not true" Now that hundreds of arrests have been made that view is demonstrably untrue https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/live-updates/college-protests-israel-palestine-war/nearly-half-of-columbia-university-and-ccny-arrests-were-nonstudent-protestors-109886454?id=109734946 " Nearly half of Columbia University and CCNY arrests were non-student protesters Of the total arrests made at Columbia University and The City College of New York, many were affiliated with the university, though nearly half were identified as non-student protesters. At Columbia University, there were 112 total arrests with 80 of the arrests being individuals affiliated with the institution while 32 individuals were unaffiliated. The protests at CCNY saw 170 total arrests with 68 individuals arrested being affiliated with the public research university and 102 individuals being unaffiliated with the college" So why does 50% of the total numbers of people arrested not being students just at 2 universities matter? Two main reasons, the first one being that the allegation of outside agitation is true and the second one is it undermines completely the view that says " these protests are about well-meaning students who have an understandable concern about where there universities spend there campus endowments " I do think most of the students have a well-meaning and genuine belief they doing the right thing even if the demands are unrealistic and unachievable But you cant deny that there is a real element of protestors who have hijacked the protests for there own radical left agendas

Mamie what is the historical connection between Moldova and Romania, did they use to be one country?

Lets hope its not as unsuccessful as the French African military interventions But to be fair to France you cant defeat Islamic extremism in Africa without also changing the economic and social conditions in these African countries and only African governments can do that France cant do that for them

Its easy to understand what is an illegal or legal protest and this is outside of criminal acts or violence being committed , it depends on things like where the protest is happening. You cant protest on private property and as far as I know certain Federal areas But you can protest in public areas. But the campus encampments and protests were largely on private sector University areas which is why much of the Universities protests have moved outside the private areas to the streets So its not a selective definition because the University can allow protests on there grounds but they have every right to call in the police to end illegal encampments on there private sector areas

Come on Lexx, lets be fair There are literally dozens of examples in the US where you see protests that arent violent or illegal or the police dont respond because a particular mayor doesnt want to escalate tension so the police will ignore much of the criminality There have been numerous BLM protests, like the weeks of protests in Portland, where the police didn't intervene or try instigate violence so they can respond with just arresting people Despite what you seem to think the US police arent some fascist organisation that takes orders from an authoritarian government. Its not how it works and you can see the obvious differences in police response in different states and in different cities And these drones are just another mechanism to ensure violent protests can be subdued and contained. Its just an additional tool, its not a bad thing