BruceVC

I've got 5 cats, one is a Norwegian forest cat and the rest are just domestic shorthaired cats, some with lynx-like tufts on their ears. I don't have any particular breed preference or something, I do like the white cats we used to have here though, but they're gone now do to castrations and sterilizations. I love cats, I wanted to see what a Norwegian forest cat looked like so I googled it. They are adorable I briefly rented a room from an old lady who bred them and pretty much always had kittens around. It was extremely therapeutic to come home to a cornucopia of kittens to play with to de-stress after work. Aaaahhhhh that is cute I can't think of anything more relaxing than coming home and having a whole lot of kittens to play with...its like having your living breathing stress-ball

I'm hoping they stick with the pirate motif, but if this picture is anything to go by, then it looks like we may be going back to a more medieval-ish theme I didn't mind the pirate theme. What I didn't like were the smallish islands and that meant less fun exploration. Agreed, one or two much larger islands would have been much better. With that said, Piranha Bytes managed to cram an amazingly high amount of stuff to find and do into each of those little islands. I was about to say that, for me what Piranha Bytes always does well is that "over the hill and far away" type of RPG. What I mean by that is they are brilliant at creating open-world RPG that you get excited exploring. The excitement at wanting to explore an RPG world is one of the fundamental tenets that make a RPG great. So yay for Risen 3, I'm very excited

Hi Walsie You are another regular who has been conspicuous by your absence. Good to have you back

Fair enough. But I've seen people end up with nothing and I can understand how they don't want to sacrifice for the "greater good". I hear you, you saying that sometimes a social change isn't worth what people can lose. And that does make sense in some cases

Interesting post, I learnt something

mmmm..the Chinese and they have done it before. What is my present for answering the question?

That's easy to say when your personal life isn't affected by reform. That's not quite true, I lived through the end of Apartheid and I experience social changes in our fledgling Democracy regularly.

That is an excellent point and I doubt anyone will challenge its logic

That's not an option and its a silly suggestion From what I understand this isn't a widepsread uprising, so why isn't that an option ? Then again, even if he does win, there'll just be claims of corruption and vote tampering. Okay my comment was inaccurate, I apologize. He may win but its unlikely based on how he has handled these protests like Fighter mentioned

And if Janukovitj was once again democratically elected? That's not an option and its a silly suggestion

All we can see this as an important lesson for any leader who wants to align with Russia when there citizens clearly don't ? I see an emergency election date is being set, that should hopefully settle the debate around " what do the citizens of Ukraine want?

"The socialist experiment has failed"? On whose account? Let's take a look at the figures: "During the past decade under Chavez, the income poverty rate in Venezuela dropped by more than half, from 54% of households below poverty level in the first half of 2003, down to 26% at the end of 2008. "Extreme poverty" fell even more - by 72%. Further, "these poverty rates measure only cash income, and doesn't take into account increased access to health care or education." "Datos reports real income grew by 137% between 2003 and Q1 2006." "Venezuela's infant mortality rate fell by 18.2% between 1998 and 2006" "Spending on education as a percentage of GDP (which grew dramatically since 1998) stood at 5.1% in 2006, as opposed to 3.4% in the last year of the Caldera government. Spending on health increased from 1.6% of GDP in 2000 to 7.71% in 2006" "In June 2010 Mark Weisbrot wrote that jobs were much less scarce then than when Chávez took office, with unemployment at 8% in 2009 compared with 15% in 1999. He also stated that the number of front-line doctors had increased tenfold in the public sector and that enrolment in higher education had doubled, noting that these statistics were backed up by the UN and the World Bank." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_policy_of_the_Hugo_Ch%C3%A1vez_government That hardly looks like a failure to me. Venezuela is a command economy and one that is absolutely reliant on oil exports. As a result, it's seriously unbalanced. But a failure? And as for the thing that the CIA has nothing to do with what's going on over there, I don't know. http://www.voltairenet.org/article30032.html Disregard the actual connections between Sharp and the CIA, I'm not necessarily buying that either—still, the media attacks and instigation of popular revolts on the streets as a tool to overthrow governments under the guise of morally acceptable "non-violence" is something to think about. Especially under the current public opinion climate where an overt use of force seems to be politically untenable. [1] [2] You make some valid points about where Venezuela has done well and I'm not disputing that. But there are also several things that under Chavez got progressively worse. Things like the persecution of the free press and a very high inflation, 52 % or so means there are currency shortages and basic food items missing from shelves. There economy is taking major strain. I quoted some of what I said from this CNN article, I also posted a Reuters article that highlights the social and financial challengers that confront Venezuela . The biggest problem IMO that Maduro faces is that he isn't the demagogue that Chavez was so I question if rhetoric will keep protesters happy, they need to make structural reforms which he seems incapable of doing http://edition.cnn.com/2014/02/14/world/americas/venezuela-protests/index.html http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/14/us-venezuela-protests-idUSBREA1D19J20140214 But lets not derail this Ukraine discussion, I would welcome a discussion on the reasons for the Venezuela protests but you should create a new thread

I'll gladly read it but I'll be brutally honest as you are in your views

That's true! His slider from satire, via irony, into almost serious, and then dead serious, is "one helluva ride", as Dan put it in is his KS thank you when KC:D ended so fantastically well. For that alone, you got to love him! It was an interesting read btw. He even had had a hard time finding a PR agency working with his Kickstarter project. You are good read of character In the interests of transparency I generally don't make long posts or engage in debates if I'm joking about a topic and sometimes I do make a point through humour but the point is still suppose to be serious. So for example the whole "dog companion" comment was aimed at people who said its unrealistic to have women in a Medieval game, I was echoing what they said to highlight what it sounds like but my choice of the dog topic was a joke as animal representation in a game shouldn't even really be a debate IMO (I hope this makes sense )

That pretty much always the economy, but if you expect die hard Russians who cry WEST to understand that your bound to be disappointed. Many of them will tell you stories about great Soviet union that has fallen ONLY because bla bla west, bla bla west, our politician sold/betrayed us out. For those who can only point the finger out and cry west, better recite this: Good points raised, but I was talking about the protests in Venezuela ...Shady brought it up in this thread. Sorry for the confusion

Yeah I know

You look good, imagine how big you would be if you did take supplements

Keyrock I'm really impressed with your views to ensure equality and fair representation in games. But sometimes we need to choose our battles, I don't want to dismiss your point but we probably won't achieve animal equality in a game like this

I'm reading a book called "Springboks on the Somme" which is about the South African military contribution during World War One. I have just read the chapter on Delville Wood, its evocative and haunting when you hear about the conditions and sacrifice during the 5 days of the battle. I can't imagine the mental and physical fortitude to survive something like that...and what makes it worse is the survivors still participated in other brutal battle like Passchendaele

Wow is this some semblance of patriotism I'm seeing, are you actually happy your country has done well?

I also think the ability to turn-off certain features is advantageous, like in Dishonoured and the way the quest markers worked

I personally like when they don't give you the skill/stat amount needed, or even the skill/stat for that matter, it just looks like any other dialogue option, and if you don't meet the requirements or fail on your roll then you fail the influence attempt and have to deal with the consequences of your failed attempt. The downsides to this method are: 1) It encourages metagaming and save-scumming. 2) It can be difficult to convey how difficult or preposterous an influence attempt might be without clobbering you over the head with a number. My responses to those two valid concerns would be: 1) People are going to metagame and save-scum anyway if they're inclined to do so. 2) I enjoy trying to decipher/guess how much something would go against a certain character's wishes and nature and how far I could push them and get away with it from what I've learned about the character, their manner of speech, personality, etc. Hi Keyrock What do you mean by metagaming and save-scum in the context of DA:I?

@ Shady The CIA and the USA has nothing to do with these protests. These protests were a long time coming, the facts are Venezuela hasn't been running there economy well for years. There has been a slow clampdown of institutions like the free press and despite the fact the country has natural resources there are shortages of food and a break down of certain basic services. The reality is there socialist experiment has failed and people in the streets are tired of it

Zora I like you and I enjoy your posts but you really need to stop believing in these anti-western conspiracy theories

Tonight I had Tomato soup for dinner