Humodour

Yes. Some of his brilliant policies so far have been: replacing the English language with Mandarin, forcing all ISPs to censor porn, violence and America, and creating little furry plush Ruddkipz toys to be distributed to all kindergartners around the country.

You don't follow Australian politics? You should. Australia has the most uranium of any country. We WILL blow you up.

I try to convince myself Sand isn't the problem and that his extremely literal, morally black and white attitude is fairly common in America*, but that just frustrates me even more. *which interestingly is true - brain development is influenced strongly by culture, and America appears to strongly favour literal, absolute judgements.

I guess their 'one pool of ammo' that all weapons drew from was kinda cool, but all of the weapons lacked punch so I didn't actually play through to see some of the cooler elements of the game. I got to it too late though, that had a lot to do with it. I didn't get to see the customization; I'd like the ability to add stuff on rails for a given situation. That'd be cool. Never confuse Deus Ex with Deus Ex 2 ever again! Seriously, Deus Ex 1 was a masterpiece. Deus Ex 2 was an example of how to make all the wrong decision when developing a sequel.

Evidence seems to indicate their torture methods are less harsh than is presumed (and common in most countries), yes. The CIA isn't a wildcard rogue organisation above the law.

I do essentially agree, Azarkon. I don't particularly think China plans to go to 'war'. I do however believe it intends to retake Taiwan forcefully and in that regard, evidence would indicate it is manoeuvring to do so. To go to war in the 'Western' sense (Vietnam, world wars, etc) is one thing; to hold off third parties in a war with a neighbour country is another entirely - China has many advantages in the latter case.

Policies on torture techniques allowed by US officials are very strict and have a requirement of not causing permanent physical damage. I don't defend the CIA, but to go around claiming it randomly tortures people is idiotic. Even in the cases it does authorise torture methods, do you really think it's a field agent that carries it out? Supposedly there are about 14 CIA operatives in entire world who are authorised to carry out the interrogation techniques which border on torture, of which there are 6: 1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him. 2. Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear. 3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the abdomen. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage. 4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to a bolt in the floor, for more than 40 hours. 5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius). 6. Waterboarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Material is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.

I beg to differ. Only a fool would go to war with China because some Chinese hackers are stealing very important trade secrets; they might be very important, but China isn't a pushover, and going to war because of them (with no way to directly tie the hackers back to government or industry officials) would result in a huge loss of life and mass economic disruption world-wide. The last thing the Western world wants is another war (rightly so). I think it's rather ingenious personally. You knock over the big multinationals and research institutes in America and Europe, then you use the technology and secrets stolen to bolster your own country's public and private industry. Not to mention military secrets such as fighter jet plans stolen from contractors like Boeing would certainly come in handy for a country which has fallen behind in military R&D but desperately wants to leap ahead of the game. I wonder how long China will keep the charade up. As long as plausible deniability exists I suppose. "We can assure you our government has never carried out military hacking attempts." But we mightn't be opposed to ensuring a private group exists whose sole purpose is to carry out 'coordinated information retrieval'." If it were a tug-o-war of information and secrets between countries it wouldn't be so bad. What concerns me all evidence points to China gearing up for military confrontation (and not in a purely defensive capacity). Poor Taiwan. All I can say is: Thank God that between India, America and Europe, there are enough superpowers to stop Chinese expansion (because for some reason I am doubting that Tibet and Taiwan are the end of it).

China fails fairly badly in technological prowess, however. The US is truly at the cutting edge when it comes to military research expenditure, and it's all but impossible for any country to match it. Oh wait, that picture just said that. I should read more carefully. Research secrets are probably one of the reasons it is resorting to hacking into government and industry databases to steal industry and government secrets; anything for an edge towards becoming an economic superpower. And they get a lot further than the governments like to admit (I've seen two stories now, Australia and America respectively, where somebody leaked the full magnitude of compromised systems - in the American case, the Pentagon had been compromised for months, whilst in the Australian case, system distribution meant only certain low to medium security areas were compromised - but they were compromised entirely). I imagine it is similar in the other countries affected (pretty much anywhere and everywhere due to the nature of the type of attack).

I hope they end the series on a happy note. But they'll probably think it's somehow a cool artistic technique to have the Battlestar explode due to a coolant leak or something just as it reaches Earth. Example one: Nobody had any idea why Starbuck was killed off at the end of season 3 nor how they were going to bring her back. The writers just thought it was 'cool'. And we need some less crappy emoticons. These smilies suck compared to vB/PHPBB ones. It's really starting to irritate me.

The CIA is frequently mis-represented in both the media and fiction. Real torture is very rarely used or supported by the CIA, and physical torture is basically forbidden. You can have a perfectly fine spy game without torture and there are many literary/cinematic techniques you can use to explain how information was extracted; allusion/implication is a common and basic one if torture is really "necessary". I don't really see how it's important to include an option for the player to torture somebody. Its contribution to improving the role-playing experience is questionable.

As I said, you can't really legislate good parenting. In light of this it is important to have state-mandated protections for children. You keep falling back to a "if their parents are ****e, let the kids fend for themselves" argument, which seems a bit barbaric to me. It's the same reason Occupational Health and Safety legislation exists; you can't rely on the employer, so you have to make legal requirements and guidelines.

Or perhaps how unique its culture is.

Well I know of at least one Goa'uld: Olokun of Yoruba mythology. I don't think there's been any systematic treatment like with Norse and Egyptian mythology, though.

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Then, as I said, better to have some measure of protection built in than none at all.

Yeah, I found the smart gun effective enough.

Today I laughed hard.

Same. I find it excellent! The humour is fantastically nerdy. I've been watching Jericho. I think I saw the finale, because it tied up lots of threads and I'm not sure how they'd go from there. That was episode 207. I enjoyed the finale, though. Probably influenced by both the writer's strike and threat of cancellation. Apparently Jericho was massively popular on the internet but not on TV. Battlestar Galactica 401 in one week!

Nothing wrong with making it 3D. Making it 2d nowadays would ensure that it would sell 9 copies or be relegated to XBOX Live Arcade. Making it first person was the bad decision. You missed my point: a third fallout game should never be made at all, isometric or 3D. BIS was only making FO3 because IPLY was forcing them to. True about 3D though - I suppose I'd be less malevolent towards the game were it designed purely for third person.

But measures like this are designed exactly for this reason; as a kind of back-up measure where the parents fail. Something Sand seems incapable of understanding. How can you claim that parenting is solely up to the parents when society influences us so dramatically? It's ludicrous. I don't excuse bad parenting, but Sand is essentially claiming kids with bad parents should just suffer because it's not society's responsibility to monitor content (when it clearly is - e.g. rating systems on television, the legal system, etc)

It's as bad as a copper who looks the other way.

sauce or gtfo

I recently came to the conclusion that moving into Iraq was a necessary step for America to maintain its image as both an economic AND military superpower. I believe it was a smart move. I'm neutral about it all. It's not as though nothing good has come of it; I won't be so brazen as to claim the Iraqis were better off with Saddam.