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But... but...

What are the upsides of Oblivion, if I may ask? The exploitable retard AI that made the game fun for all the wrong reasons? I swear, I've had way more fun watching Oblivion Gamer Poop vids than playing the game itself. For me the worst would be DA2. At least the worst of the ones I've played through and whose memory I haven't repressed for my own protection.

Give her a pump, slap some oil on her and get the right lighting, and see if you still believe that. edit: she's smoking hot, but girls don't get much more muscular than that without the magic stack. Look at those shoulders.

Maybe you should try them, if you get all your info on the games from here, you're bound to be positively surprised Yeah, I'm going to agree with Nep on this one. They should be pretty cheap by now and if you enjoy neat sci-fi games with enough testosterone to make your PC grow a dong, you'll get a few hours of good fun. They are not the be all and end all of RPGs, but they weren't meant to be anyway. Opinions on combat are varied so YMMV.

I'd recommend giving it a read. I wouldn't consider it to be written at too high of a level. I'd recommend paying attention to the context. It wasn't about the content of the link, but the cheap synthesis to the half assed quote from the opening post, make it seem like an attempt to say 'Hey science is behind me'... What, I implied is that further reading about what WHO recommendation actually were and understand their implication would be advisable. Also assuming that the world health organization are not made of bunch of clueless idiots, whose conclusion can be disproved by googling an article from 1997 is always a good idea... Again, it is not possible to read what the WHO recommendations really are because the report is for subscribers only. You would have figured this out if you had tried to follow up on the article or, heh, even read the post where I commented on this fact. Sorry, but I'm not going to take your word for it that reading the WHO report would change my mind about whether government intervention in regulating sugar consumption is "advisable". Furthermore, I am willing to concede that the paper may have been rendered obsolete by subsequent research. I have not been able to find any such research, but if you can provide evidence otherwise, I'd be more than happy to examine it. But as it stands, the burden of proof is on you. If you wish to discuss any specific part of the paper you don't agree with, please, go right ahead. Hand waving and whining about how you don't like my tone isn't going to make it go away, however. Finally, I suggest you look up "appeal to authority". Simply because something carries an official seal it does not mean it's not utter hogwash. I'm not saying the WHO are a bunch of idiots (that is a red herring and a strawman, look those up too), but I don't trust them any more than I trust you, the Pope, or my mother, in matters scientific. Nothing personal. *edited because read fail

Why, of course I'm not a robot, sir!

Just finished Shadowrun Returns. Fun, but it's a bit of a barebones game. Most skills offer nothing other than plain damage increases over rank 5 or so, the party and inventory management is really limited, and the campaign offers very little in the way of actual roleplaying. I've also read that a common complaint is the graphics, but they are serviceable and I love the hand-drawn feel of the sets. Well worth the 15€. Time to check the user made content, I guess.

I used to read the BSN regularly for over a year until moderation was taken over by BioWareBot# and I can say that it was much more "lol, noobson" than <Tali romance rant>. Of course, I kept mostly to the MP forum, but there were no fanboys to speak of. Notably, the MP forum has almost 2x as many threads as the story discussion forum. How many of those were actually glorious troll threads, I cannot say. Mostly the same thing with the SWTOR boards (BW + SW fanboys). A few of the regulars here would feel right at home over there, methinks (moderation notwithstanding).

The only shocking revelation here is that this guy is actually flaunting his beliefs, and at the same time is not articulate enough—in English—to assemble anything but a paper-thin defense of his stance ("scientific figures published by, uh... scientists!" LOL). Most elected officials are simply a tad smarter—just about enough to make nice and pretend they care about the peasants they tread on.

If you feel like training (as opposed to feeling obligated to train), that's the best sign that you are fit for duty. Go hit the weights, but pay attention. If you insist on using the same loads as you did before you were sick, you are probably going to hit failure much sooner than usual, this is normal. I remember you said you had had a fainting incident caused by lack of nutrients, which means low blood sugar levels. That means low liver and intramuscular glycogen levels leading to poor comparative performance, especially if you haven't been eating normally the last few days. Do not try to push beyond failure or get the same results as you were before. I'd say a good approach to see how you react is taking a compound exercise and doing 3-4 warm-up sets with increasing weights to see how it goes. If by the end of the warm-up you're not feeling good (excessive panting, shaking, nausea, cold sweat, etc), just give it up. Otherwise continue, but a good strategy to consider while you recover completely would be deloading. Remember that a workout is considered an aggression by the system and strains the immune system—intense bouts can give you a fever, as I'm sure you know. However, you train alone, and that is a serious risk if something goes wrong. So consider finding a partner to train with for a few days or just laying it off completely. Two weeks without training isn't going to kill your gains. Your call. Good luck, and play it safe.

I was frankly surprised he would allow himself to be recorded having a conversation in these terms with a foreign journalist (or whatever Fry is). "Let's discuss how retarded your political program is" is not exactly the kind of interview format I'm used to seeing, that's for sure. But I'm going to assume that if he was elected, his ideas must resonate with some people, at least. Disclaimer: I have no idea how elections work in Russia.

Random link on the internet that I don't understand, thank god! I knew that World Health Organization was full of ****, my mama didn't raise no fool You understand that the linked BBC article about the WORLD health organization report was not written for medical professionals, it almost certainly focused on undeveloped countries that discover cancer as their life standards/expectancy go up(so no reason to get your panties in a bunch, The Man has bigger issue to worry about) and if it recommended anything concerning sugar it is very likely was the standard recommendation about surgery drinks(not news). Which is why I spoke in terms of general policy, after all there people who are far more qualified than me to define what exactly effects obesity.. Surely WHO has couple of them on staff.. Hold up. That's not a "random link" by any stretch of the word. It's a paper published in a peer-reviewed journal, the American Journal for Clinical Nutrition. The business of these people is science—you know, the stuff that supposedly supports the "findings" and "recommendations" issued by organizations such as the WHO. If you are not used to reading scientfic papers, you can skip the part dealing with the methodology (only of real interest if you are a scientist yourself and are reviewing the paper) and stick to the abstract, results and discussion. About the link in the OP, I cannot really comment—apparently you can only access the actual WHO report if you are a subscriber. Funny, considering that a) it is a non-profit organization, and b) their work can influence the policy of governments (i.e. it can affect me). Regardless, what I can say about the BBC article is that it's based on a "predicted" cancer rate increase by the WHO, and then a list of risk factors, only one of which is obesity; special note is made of cervical and breast cancer. The latter is weakly related to obesity, and the former is caused by a virus, but the article goes on a tirade about healthy habits and nutrition nonetheless. I have long ago stopped paying attention to mainstream news outlets, and this is a good example of why. Make no mistake, obesity is unhealthy. But the article is one big non sequitur; maybe the whole WHO report is too, but I can't tell because I'm poor and therefore unworthy of perusing such wisdom.

Hmm. We have some special taxation on tobacco and alcohol over here (IIRC ~9.5€/L for booze), and that doesn't prevent clubs and bars from being chock full after work hours. And boy, there are a lot of watering holes in this country. I don't know how taxing works in Sweden, but you have to account for the fact that the average income for Spain is just a bit over half that of Sweden's. People who can't afford that much hard liquor just get drunk on cheap wine. Rather, it's a cultural thing, I think. Even within the same country, people may not be so inclined to spend time that way in some regions as in others. In other news, sugar does not really lead to obesity. Or rather, not by itself. So yeah, taxing sugar is just a random cash grab by The Man.

Huh. I'm going to suggest that the people you are thinking about don't really like tennis, female or otherwise. They just enjoy watching athletic women running around and grunting. I try to watch as much tennis as possible (men's or women's)—the fact that some matches feature some of the best legs in female athletes is just a bonus, and one that you don't get to appreciate with most camera angles so meh. I don't see what the problem with grunting is, either. You'd guess everyone should be used to it by now, and it's not restricted to women's tennis either. I guess whining is not solely a prerogative of video game forum members.

It's always a shock when the body goes "okay, that's enough, I'm taking over" after you've been ignoring the red flags for a while. Looks like you need to throttle back a bit—hope your obligations allow for it. Last time I got a stomach flu I had to cut recovery shorter than I would have otherwise because I was at risk of missing an important exercise involving explosives priming, machinegun field practice and crawling. Mostly crawling. Anyway, get well soon bud. I always check FB when I have reason to suspect the victims are lying about their injuries (I've actually busted people this way... hello perjury...) Isn't that how they busted a bunch of post-9/11 benefits fraudsters? Yeah, people...

Russia has a rich history, an immense cultural patrimony and beautiful women. But I know I'd be visiting mostly to watch Putin strangle a bear... with another bear. You need to highlight that.

The slippery slope works both ways, I think. There is a recorded tendency by those in power to abuse and expand their power if no resistance is encountered, but that is also an argument that can be wielded to stand against reforms that can be advantageous to society as a whole. Ideally, the people would handle their own affairs and need very little support or intervention from the state—but then again we need the state (and the rule of law entails a degree of repression) because real societies and people behave and interact in... less than ideal ways. The optimal balance... your guess is as good as mine, quite literally.

You are, of course, absolutely right. Different people hired to handle different tasks more or less independently of each other. I'm more wondering if the pr shenanigans and hype are really necessary if your target knows precisely what kind of game you are making. And I'm not suggesting "fire a community manager and hire a new lead systems designer!" either, no. Back in 2000 you'd see ads for games in mags, a preview, maybe an interview. It was more straightforward and there was no need for silliness in the vein of "press a button and something awesome happens!!1". Of course, the job of marketing types is to sell—not only to the public, but to potential employers... I dunno. Simpler times, man. Tell you what. You refrain from making assumptions about me and my motivations and I'll stay at 2 warnings. Deal? In my time here, I have made no value judgments of CoD, ever. I have not explicitly or implicitly referred to the players that constitute the target market for those games. I take no special pride in being a fan of old cult games, obscure Pakistani flicks or defunct deodorant brands. But what I can tell you is that I do not like CoD games—I like party-based games with a strong tactical component built on top of a solid narrative that supports a wide array of C&C; games that offer the best bang for my buck. I also happen to enjoy wargames but thankfully there's no shortage of those. I realize that, looking at the numbers, I am in the minority. And I can live with that. What I'm not so thrilled about is companies stripping down and applying obscene amounts of makeup to games I'm interested in a priori in an effort to appeal to the largest possible amount of people, while systematically promoting an image that the finished product doesn't live up to. Not because I hate greed and dishonesty (which I do) or because I rejoice in being a special snowflake (which I don't), but because that very business model is conducive to producing games with little entertainment value for me.

Though I agree with your post, I sometimes really wish BW would go back and focus more on, you know, the gaming aspect of the games and less on the marketing/pr/community management BS. This is from an outsider's perspective, obviously, and there are signs that there is more going on under the hood (I remember reading some interesting posts by a gameplay designer for ME2), but the apparent focus on stuff that is, at best, ancillary and should be taking a back seat to gameplay is style over substance. It's made even worse by the fact that practical applications of the principles of "engaging the community" and "listening to fans" usually amount to nothing and sometimes backfire—I'm thinking of the "heal to full" and "the endings weren't universally disliked" debacles as examples, but they aren't the only ones. I don't know how much of that is attributable to being "a division of EA", and at the end of the day, I don't care. From their track record, it's plain that EA has only one aim and that is making these numbers with all their games. It's a legitimate goal, but one that unfortunately precludes them from making the kind of games I'd enjoy best. Now, I had a lot of fun with the ME3 trilogy and I knew what I was getting into, but the replay value is frankly low. Call me old fashioned but I don't need to be playing a brand new, cookie-cutter, completely forgettable game every other week; I can be entertained for months on end with the same game if it's good enough. Obviously that makes me a non-ideal customer in the eyes of corporations whose business model is based on churning out a new(?) sequel every two years. Though, judging by the crowdfunding phenomenon, maybe I'm not the only one. Whoa, that ended up being more of a rant than I had intended. Oh well, nothing new under the sun.

But Wals' synthesis follows naturally from your particular example. Defeat smoking and something else will replace it as the preventable leading cause of death worldwide—this, in his view, will eternally perpetuate the mandate of those who seek to make everyone "healthier", which also connects with his "delusions of immortality" remark, before. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. What I am not so convinced of is his other assertion that everything affects cancer rates. This may be strictly true, but the extent to which this risk is relevant is what makes it suspect. I mean, your body fights cancer constantly, in your sleep. It could fail to naturally defeat it at some point, so an argument could be made that sleeping gives you cancer. This is clearly an absurd conclusion. And while I'm not more convinced than Wals than governments (and especially undemocratic, transnational bureaucracies) are exempt from reaching absurd conclusions (deliberately or by sheer disconnection from reality), I'm afraid this is a big ol' slippery slope. The amount of power and ability to regulate that states have is arbitrary and not everyone will agree exactly where the proverbial line in the sand lies. But it has to be drawn somewhere.

Good point. For some reason I find grand strategy LP's much more gripping than for any other genres. I had never thought such games had a "storyline", as they are all about the gameplay, decisions and planning. But if I'm not the one playing it and it has no plot to speak of in a conventional sense, why are they so ****ing awesome?

This experiment was brought to you by the great N. Tesla himself. Show some respect.

*tips hat* Well played, sir. Well played.

Well, can't speak for anyone else, but in my case it's my theoretical degree in physics at work. Though my line of work is more physiques, actually. *cough* Yeah, OK. I'll go sit in the corner now. (IIRC Zoraptor and Rostere are actual scientists, maybe someone else. Scientists are people too)

You seriously don't notice the sexualized advertisements and other content everywhere you go? Sexualized ads are sexual orientation-neutral, mostly. They just focus on exacerbating the physical attractiveness of the model, regardless of sex. So I guess an homosexual female could be just as enticed by a Victoria's Secret ad as me. I'm not defending it, but objectification is not necessarily a celebration of heterosexuality. Maybe where you live it's different? But I was under the impression that Germany has some seriously stringent statutes regarding advertisements.