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Er, call me naïve, but wouldn't this be solved by having cops earn more than a pittance? Encourage smart, hard-working, committed and motivated youths to pursue a career in law enforcement, instead of recruiting just about anyone that can pass a drug test. Societies have the police forces they pay for, like everything else.

Illegal to record the police? Where was this abhorred law passed? Spain. At the vanguard of unemployment, social inequality, and retrograde, stupid-ass lawmaking. Yes, this is the EU (if only barely). (for a less inflammatory perspective than Alex Jones')

Unfit individuals shouldn't be cops, regardless of sex. Still, it's a 2v1 situation. When attempting to subdue violent and corpulent individuals, it's common to see 4 or 5v1. Wrestling is hard. Fitness helps, but training and numbers trump that by far. My personal reaction to that is "meh", though. Two weeks ago we had a new "Public Security Law" passed that makes recording cops an offence with fines up to 30.000€, and insulting a cop now carries a penalty of 600€. Contempt of cop is finally in the letter of the law. There is no judicial review for any of that, and the word of a cop is evidence enough.

Actually, during the recent 12x Class Mission XP event, people were going 1-55 in a matter of hours, with the record being like ~8 hours last I checked. That probably includes spacebarring through dialogues so double that number if you want to get a fair representation of the actual amount of content. Everything else are MMO time sinks designed into the game to sustain, as Althernai surmised, the subscription model. Not that I disagree that a SP game with 8 different (but tangential at some points) stories each lasting ~15 hours could work — many people, myself included, took advantage of this event to go through class stories as a single player game.

Yep. Some of that stuff will work you in ways you aren't used to, especially your core stabilizers, and much shaking and panting will ensue. I've stepped once or twice into a Pilates class, and I came out humbled. There I discovered that my hip flexors were weak and that caused my knee and hip extensors to be shortened, which decreased lower limb mobility. And yes, I can deadlift 2x my bodyweight. Funny how that works. The problem with that sort of activity is that you will adapt relatively quickly, and as there is no increase in resistance or session length, progress stops, and it's hard to stay motivated.

To be honest, I don't take Metacritic seriously at all. But from what I've seen, DAI hasn't received "mostly positive" feedback. Rather, mixed, lukewarm with some people loving it and some people hating it. Pretty much like every other AAA project these days, I guess. *shrug*

Reasons not to block you: your random pic posting sprees sometimes contain hot Eastern women. Reasons to block you: they also sometimes contain disturbing pics of our new lizard overlords. Decisions, decisions...

Yeah, they commented on this in the Michael Brown thread. Not much to say. At best, cops will be more on edge than usual, possibly leading to further violence. At worst, militarization of police forces will pick up, laws will be stiffened, and what have you. Not sure what cops being scum or shining, selfless examples of modern virtue has to do with random murder either, but... please continue?

Bodyweight training? Oh, you are one of those. If you are even moderately strong, and by no means a power lifter you should be able to do many exercises with FAR more weight than your own body weight. An average gym goer should be able to dead lift two times their own weight, bench press at least (1 rep max) 1.5 times their weight, barbell row (1 rep max) their own body weight. Not to mention chin ups with body weight should be doable for every average joe, a person with good overall fitness should be doing weighted chin ups. This is... an exaggeration. Strength standards would put someone doing what you say in the advanced or elite levels. That's someone with multiple year strength training experience, with clear goals, periodization, and on point nutrition and rest. No, an average joe cannot perform chin ups, and the average gym goer cannot DL or squat twice their body weight. Not outside of Austria, anyway.

You are going by the literal, 50%+1 definition of "mostly", right? I haven't played DAI, but from what I've read, it doesn't really deliver on promises made, it's buggy as hell (a hallmark of Bioware products) and the PC controls aren't very good. This doesn't necessarily make it a bad game, but nothing that "restores faith", whatever that means. I'll get around to playing it if I see a good bargain or in a few years, and I'll probably like it enough to finish it, much like every other Bio game, except JE. However, I reserve my worship and faith for stuff that is actually important in my life, such as peanut butter and bacon sandwiches.

So, by your own admission, the main cause of the Russian crisis is the oil prices drop. But six months ago, you were able to secretly predict that the Russian economy would be devastated by sanctions... and an oil price crash which hadn't happened yet. Let me guess: you are a wsj subscriber.

Ughhh... I'm not even going to touch the "Russian intransigence and predation" bit. Pointless as this is, what, the fourth iteration of this thread? w/e Regardless, it looks like I was wrong. Oil prices are being manipulated, as openly as the nov OPEC meeting. btw, thanks for the "unbiased" wsj sales pitch... bad afternoon at work so I needed the laugh.

Yeah, sorry. I totally forgot that NASDAQ editors are completely free from bias and their pieces have absolutely no political slant. Everyone knows that's exclusive to Obsidianites. On top of that, their predictions are always spot on. Because otherwise, you wouldn't be linking them! Funny. The worst seems to be caused by the drop in oil prices... which is not something that's being (openly) manipulated. Other than their reliance on commodity exports and failure to diversify, how is that Russian stupidity? A serious drop in oil prices would hit any major oil exporter hard, sanctions or not, and that seems to be what's thrown Putin's calculations off. Again, what am I supposed to learn from the articles? (for once try something that isn't cherrypicking. A decade or so of the same drill, it starts to get boring)

I should have known better than to open that can of worms... (btw, I totally launch Barbarossa in June 1940 after "liberating" huge amounts of French cheese. For the Fatherland!) I read those. Not sure what I'm supposed to learn aside from some funky idea that Russians are "culturally" inclined to avoid paying up, lol (I must have Russian blood, that would explain the shill accusations). Are those worst case scenarios? Likely outcomes if things continue on the current path? Wishful thinking on the editors' part? What?

I wonder what the reaction would be if hax0rs reportedly working for Iran conducted an attack against the company responsible for Celeb Big Bro or some other tripe. The actual quality of the piece is irrelevant, but I don't think anyone invoked "artistic value" as a defense when **** went down with the Muhammad cartoons. Are they running out of Salman Rushdies to go after or what...?

If anything, the prelude to WWII is an example of foreign powers applying economic pressure on a country which did not not prevent war or serve to significantly hinder a command economy's ability to assemble a massive war machine. Conditions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles were so much harsher than anything that can be applied against Russia today, that they ensured that Germany would be doomed to poverty in Keynes' opinion, and unlike Russia's present state, they were imposed on an economy already exhausted after WWI. Taking the lesson that chauvinistic nationalism must be crushed from the interbellum period doesn't really work because chauvinistic nationalism in the Third Reich was the heir of chauvinistic nationalism in the German Empire, and that had been crushed already 20 years before. So much so, that the Second Reich ceased to exist politically, though the economic infrastructure and resources of the country were left intact. WWII can only be understood as a continuation of WWI and that was the inevitable outcome of the incompatible ambitions of newly industrial empires and countries walking in lockstep towards war due to pre-existing alliances. Chauvinistic nationalism was a factor, but not the factor, I think. What did work to destroy the German ability to sustain the war effort was carpet bombing Germany into the stone age. That does indeed qualify as "crushing", but I doubt it's what you're proposing for Russia. A case could be made that Britain and especially France which had, at the time, the most powerful army in the world, should have declared war on Germany as soon as they started violating the Treaty in 1935 and perhaps the war would have been over sooner and with less bloodshed, and from there draw a parallel with current events, but who knows. On the other hand you have Iraq, whose military had effectively been emasculated by 2003 as a result of economic strangulation, and Cuba, which after the fall of the Soviet Union has basically been forced to autarky. Russia isn't Iraq or Cuba, though. Heh, maybe in 100 years historians will regard WWIII as the inevitable result of concessions made to the Soviets at Yalta. History is funny like that.

Cognitive dissonance shouldn't feel new to you if you read WoT regularly. It's about par for the course here.

My bad. I hadn't actually researched the extent of the attack. Seems they even leaked unreleased films along all sorts of personal confidential data. The description is so over the top that it could well be the script for one of those 90's cyber crime b-films. This **** puts Anonymous' antics to shame. Still, I was mostly surprised that Paramount would also follow suit and pull Team America. Paramount and Sony are different companies, right? They have their unreleased flicks and all the dirty laundry on the cloud too or what? I'm a weird sort of guy. Sorry, I guess? Disclaimer: I haven't even visited 4chan.

So, after (allegedly) North Korean leet haxxors broke into Sony's computers and leaked juicy bits such as some producer accusing Angelina Jolie of being a big poo-poo head, the studio decided to pull an upcoming movie, The Interview. Some cinemas protested and offered screenings of what probably is one of the worst movies ever made, Team America. But now, in a proverbial exercise of doing the right thing for the wrong reason, Paramount have decided to pull Team America too! *puts on tinfoil hat* Anyone else think this is just an elaborate publicity stunt?

You are missing the point and conflating two different things. I was talking about the fact that there is now documental evidence that the US have been using torture routinely and Wals' factually and morally suspect comparison. The fact that this has been made public is a different matter altogether, but we can discuss it as well, if that's what you want. Who, and why has made this public? Who stands to benefit from it? Whose political career will be damaged*? I find it also rather amusing that if it's the gov't doing it, it's something laudable and the result of them believing in "true democracy", but if it's Snowden or Assange... they are traitors that must be hunted down, tried and convicted. Welcome to Denial. Population: You. *reminder that people usually are hanged, shot or imprisoned for life for pulling this kind of thing. In this case, I doubt we'll even see criminal charges being filed. I didn't say they weren't torture but that they are certainly the milder version of it. Right, I'll bite. What are you basing this opinion on? Have you experienced both versions of torture so you have an informed opinion on the severity of different tortures? Are you a mental health specialist whose field of research is torture? I'm willing to admit that I may be wrong here, but I'm going to need something substantial; I'm not trying to antagonize you. I'm simply going from an internationally accepted standard that accepts no qualifications. Do you have something to challenge that? Please, call a spade a spade. Do you have any evidence that *torture* helped prevent any attacks? Or you just support a policy of doing random, stupid **** and hope for results, without review?

No, it reasonably cannot. Unless you are thinking the kind of imprisonment or punishment that "accidentally" ends with prisoners almost drowning in a toilet, hitting themselves against the bars of their cells or being tasered "for their own protection", repeatedly. Did you even read the definition? Here, let me help you: They aren't even my definitions, they are the accepted international legal standards for torture (which the US is a signatory of, might I add). You think they are hyperbolic? Take it up with them and explain to them how being smacked around a bit and a little waterboarding here and there never killed nobody, and that only being stretched on the rack or having your eyes gouged out with a burning piece of metal are actual torture, because they tend to leave marks. In the next episode, we will discuss "mild" murder, "mild" rape, and "mild" crimes against humanity. Stay tuned!

Having your head cut off on camera is not torture, it's murder. So apples and oranges, chum. Beatings have been a common occurrence at gitmo as reported by former prisoners. And I see your live decapitations and raise you a few hundred lucky winners blown to bits by drone strikes. Yeah, let's not forget who we're talking about here. Further, I cannot help but point out a sort of contradiction in what you said. If torture is immoral, what exactly are you trying to achieve by establishing degrees of comparison between "mild*" and "harsh" torture? Is mild torture less immoral than harsh torture? Does applying only mild torture make these torturers and their enablers better in some way than whoever "we're fighting here"? (Of course it does, they are our guys, and it's a simple fact of life that we are inherently better... even when committing heinous crimes. ) *Out of curiosity, where are you drawing the line for "mild" torture? Does it have to do with intent? The effects on victims? Is it about the instruments used? I'm asking because this distinction you are making is really a medieval concept that has been discarded in modern times, and currently, there is no such distinction as far as the ICC or the UN Convention against Torture are concerned: So, I'll ask again. What exactly are you trying to prove here?

I take it you spam them for guild runs or something. I find "tacticals" really boring so I don't do them any more than I need to. And the new 60 HMs are bugged as far as loot goes so I'm not bothering either, concentrating on leveling alts and crafting skills instead. You can do the end boss solo mode now and finish the story — the bug has been fixed and it can be completed. The ops is different. Also there is a weekly that simply repeats that instance in solo mode, so better get used to it, heh. I didn't like the whole pirate-y thing in Rishi very much, to be honest, but I suppose that running through the story with a scoundrel or bounty hunter probably makes more sense. I still don't understand why they assumed that "pirate" means "Pirates of the Caribbean" when drawing inspiration for the outfits you get from quests. It's funny because not a single NPC in the whole expansion wears that, and the gear from packs is totally different too. Oh well, free credits at least.

Because the people directing it now have PhDs and conduct tortures "scientifically"? It's like all those medical experiments carried out at Auschwitz — there was a rationale for them and they were directed by someone with researcher credentials. Turned out it was just a sick bastard abusing power to realize his own deranged fantasies. It's not too difficult to indoctrinate a grunt, a security guard or an army officer, to believe in that. As for those wishing that the CIA was done away with, well, good luck with that. The US intelligence apparatus is just a part of the deep state, also comprised of lobbysts, NGOs, media outlets, private contractors and more that have gradually wrested power away from elected officials. It essentially operates on autopilot and dismantling it is impossible due to its sheer size as long as the money keeps flowing and the country doesn't tear itself apart. The most egregious proof of this is how Obama not only continued his predecessor's policies but expanded on them, despite his harsh criticisms and promises before he came to power. The President is powerless. I already posted this some time ago, but it's good reading for anyone, especially American taxpayers: Top Secret America, a hidden world growing beyond control Quick guys, put on your tinfoil hats!

VB? Wasn't the concept for that basically recycled for NV and the DLCs?