Humodour

Between PayPal and Kickstarter and it looks like they'll reach 3 million.

A few things: 1) He is a hard-core economic libertarian. The beliefs of economic libertarians often run contrary to how modern humans like society to work, with things like environmental regulations, public healthcare, public education, public funding for universities as well as government subsidy of university fees, government intervention in and/or control of natural monopolies, etc. 2) He doesn't believe in even small budget defecits. Although in a country like America this is probably a good thing, considering Americans both private and public don't have a ****ing clue how to handle money or be fiscally responsible. 3) He likes to make abortion a political football, as so many US politicians do - the criminalisation and stigma surrounding abortion hurts young people and changes lives for the worse. 4) He advocates the outright removal of many important government agencies. This point is short and I haven't gone into detail, but it's not difficult to imagine the deleterious consequences, especially since one of the agencies he advocates eliminating is the agency for environmental oversight. 5) He is homophobic. But that doesn't matter too much because he seems capable of not letting it interfere with his core ideology of support for indivudal rights. 6) He would ideally like to abolish any public funding of education (and public schools along with it). I do not believe that children's educations should be left entirely up to the market. The market ****s up. Complex systems correct themselves and go through cycles, that's just how the maths works. Removing any trace of government intervention won't change that, and in an industry like education, that means when the market messes up, children's lives are impaired. In fact, Ron Paul goes so far as to claim that "education is not a right". That puts me and him fundamentally at odds and makes him somebody I could never vote for (were there an equivalent politician in Australia). 7) He claims global warming is not an important problem. Typical Republican stance, really. Although curiously he's so far managed to avoid claiming global warming isn't happening. I think. There's more, but I think those points cover enough for now. I must admit, however, that reading up on him further has made me dislike him a little less: he doesn't endorse a return to the gold standard, he voted against the war in Iraq, he is wary of inflation, he opposes the death penalty, he opposes the stupid war on drugs, he advocates seperation of marriage from government involvement entirely (thus solving the current cruel situation of same-sex marriages being illegal), Basically, just because Ron Paul is sufficiently different to the usual Republican dregs does not make him worth our time, although it is nice to have some fresh ideas in US politics for once.

Volourn's insistent rantings aside, I think most gamers from our generation who are familiar with Bioware's name can recognise BG1 for the genius that it was. My personal opinion is that BG1 and KOTOR are Bioware's two best games so far. BG1 was certainly the most talked about RPG in my peer groups throughout primary and high-school (after the Fallouts).

I'll "pledge" $15 simply because it's probably going to be one the cheapest ways to purchase the game.

Ummm, NO. I think you'll find that if you bother to do a little research, you'll discover that it was Rise of the Triad that first exhibited robotic scorpions! Jesus, are you like 12 or something? Any real gamer would know that.

Neither Obama nor Romney nor Ron Paul are sane enough for the rest of the world. America needs to become less irrational. Either way, Obama is the least extreme candidate that's for sure.

The tail does actually allow more degrees of freedom for that tail minigun to target objects, just from visual observation.

Diablo 3 is dead to me. A combination of little things over the years that I've seen/heard that've put me off. Quite a shame, but I'm very excited for Torchlight 2's multiplayer still. Will buy that on day one, and for 1/4 the price of Diablo 3 (**** you Activision, you ruined Blizzard).

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

http://en.wikipedia....achronox#Sequel Sound familiar? Give them the IP you bastards! And also, I want System Shock 3.

That game is so disappointing man. Imagine that you buy a book, you read it, and then go "****, that was one of the best books I've ever played", and then you go to read the sequel since it leaves so much hanging in the air and was clearly designed to have an ending come out later. Except there is no sequel!!!!!11111! Bastards. P.S. Play the game - it's amazing.

I'll be buying this.

Tradition, by mutilation people. uh huh. No thanks. I take the consumer paradise over this barbarism anytime, anywhere. This might come as a surprise to you, but there are also lots of people in Austria who are into causing themselves pain. How they choose to do it doesn't really have any relevance, whether we condone of the acts or not.

Honestly, I prefer the Filipino tradition of voluntary crucifixion over the ridiculous consumer whore parade that Easter has become in English-speaking countries.

Decriminalisation just encourages the bastards in power to think that the status quo is OK.

Why Amazon?

Kickstarter projects have the most donations at the start and the end. Wasteland 2 is at the end of the middle of its run, so I'd say there's plenty of life left in it yet.

Between this thread and this thread and the near-global Ostrich approach to global warming, well, I'll let Farnsworth speak for me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35TbGjt-weA

Hey Alvin, is your Xbox gamertag a typo for 'Spliffer'? Edit: Yep, I'm definitely picking up a green vibe.

http://gawker.com/5887087/rick-santorum-made-entirely-of-gay-porn

So it's the same old story. A bunch of high-profile industry professionals in law, health and politics (including a former premier of state and current high-profile federal senator) submit a report to the government detailing how the drug war represents 40 years of failure and needs to be replaced with a better system. Government ignores report and says it's up to the community to show that they want drug law reform before the government will even touch it. Nevermind that polls have shown for a while that there is between 60% to 80% of the population that wants marijuana legalised or decriminalised (polls vary between each other and between legalisation and decriminalisation). http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/drugs-war-a-failure-that-bred-criminals-20120402-1w8v3.html It's the same ****ing joke response we're getting on legalising gay marriage; society overwhelmingly wants it, government couldn't give a damn.

You should still care that they succeed because they'll serve as an example for others to follow (e.g. Obsidian).

Yeah, we've banned Huawei from participating in the construction of our national broadband network. With good reason, I feel. Although I guess the fact that the government is building the network does guarantee that they'll be throwing those backdoors in at every relevant node. Apparently the network engineers that do it are afraid to talk about it. Could be conspiracy-level stuff, but a few documents have leaked out over the years that indicate the Aus gove does in fact have backdoors. P.S. I can verify 100% that ECHELON exists. I've seen the radomes used by the Australian portion of it to monitor EMR intelligence (e.g. satellites) from Oceania, South-East Asia, China, India, and Pakistan. Although honestly Echelon is mostly digital these. And apparently we've got more than a couple of people from the NSA over at places like Pine Gap here working with our groups like ASIO and the DSD to operate all those radomes, among other things. I don't think anybody really denies that it exists nowadays (I mean the EU has made it clear that ECHELON exists since they consider it a very low level threat), they'll just refuse to tell you what it is for. I think that we will see the ideal of the right to privacy die out with us. It certainly doesn't exist in 1/6 of the world (China), and increasingly our governments and corporations are pursuing the same path.

Wow, and to think Australia managed to ditch our censorship scheme in the end. Still, apparently the government (ASIO, AFP) have warrantless wiretaps at every ISP. So that's pretty bad. I guess it's not as bad because it's not enshrined in law like the UK, though? Maybe. It's all terribly Orwellian.

My favourite FPS games are mostly RPGs or hybrids: Half-Life 1 HL 1: Opposing Force Half-Life 2: Episode 1 Deus Ex 1 Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines System Shock 2 Psychonauts NOLF 1 (never did play 2... is it worth it? NOLF 1 was amazing) Giants: Citizen of Kabuto Portal 1 Portal 2 Dark Messiah of Might and Magic Left 4 Dead Borderlands