213374U

Huh. Never played a WH40k game -- not a fan of WH in general. But that trailer made me want to go fight space heretics, dammit. Is the game actually any good?

See, it's increasingly difficult to understand what you are talking about, when you keep moving the goalposts around. Now we are to refer to a video of something in Turkey, to understand some obscure overarching point regarding what second-generation muslims living in the US want? What "policy" are you talking about? By the way: Turkey's regression is chiefly the work of Ottoman fetishist and reactionary extraordinaire Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, which is, as you well know, a valued ally of the west in the fight against communism terrorism illegal immigration. edit: oh boy, GD linking Alex Jones' site. The seventh seal has been broken.

You are explaining yourself plenty well. It just seems that some members here are bent on equivocating by making up absurd and extreme scenarios, and filing them under tolerance, so they can more easily claim that "tolerance" is a failed idea. Religious tolerance, as proposed by such as Locke, does not include accepting religiously-mandated violations of the law of the land. Indeed, for tolerance to work, all members of society must agree that secular authorities ("the magistrate") supersede religious authorities in all matters except strictly those of cult and faith, and only when those do not come in conflict with the law of the land. This is what makes religious tolerance work as a basis for peaceful coexistence of different religious groups. That being said, there is a problem, and that is that Islam is still a religion imposed by government fiat in many countries. This is in direct conflict with the above, and it's not immediate for all muslims that such a thing is fundamentally incompatible with post-Enlightenment western culture. It certainly doesn't help that we tend to bomb places where Islam is second to secular law (cf. Iraq), and as Zoraptor pointed out, prop up regimes where the opposite is true.

Yeah... I'm not sold on the idea that being killed by a religious fanatic for religious reasons is inherently worse or more dangerous than being killed by a criminal in the course of an armed robbery, or by a former FBI nutcase. Could be that my brain is broken, but I really, really don't see how exactly a jihadi crackpot is more "at war" with society than any of the 30-50 serial killers from Raithe's post. I am more or less immune to marketing and advertising, so that may be a part of it. The point would hold water if we were talking about organized groups seeking to overthrow the current government and replace it with a caliphate, but this is in the context of lone wolf attacks, not IS gaining a foothold on US soil.

I'm sure some more can be squeezed out of Greece. Anyway. I don't know why y'all in such a hurry to leave. Wherever are you going to find a nicer evil overlord?

Have you stopped beating your girlfriend?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/euro-2016-vladimir-putin-russia-violence-england-fan-fights-doubt-a7087971.html The thread that keeps on giving.

I don't think it's the same. In those cases it's not political correctness ('cept maybe in the UK) impeding law enforcement, but something much more obvious -- those occurrences could be used directly as a political weapon against the incumbent government's immigration policies, especially in Merkel's case, so politicians did their damnedest to cover it up. Perhaps it's different across the pond, but we aren't quite at the stage where cops investigating or arresting browns or blacks automatically triggers cries of "racism!" by the twitter leftard brigades. Sadly it's just a matter of time.

Doesn't need to be a zip gun. Starter pistols can be modified to fire steel ball bearings, which can kill. I don't know about the UK but you can buy those over here without a permit. Not exactly "hand-made", but close enough.

...the article? You may not have been worried. I'm worried about the constant stirring of the hornet's nest that is the Middle East, considering that it contains the most insane nuclear player anywhere in the world.

Huh, Snave's still playing. Gotta admire his dedication. Meanwhile at Bioware Austin:

No, it very much does not work for you, the NSA, or anyone. You cannot solve the problem with today's (or tomorrow's) algorithms, and the article touches on this: Suppose that NSA’s system is really, really, really good, really, really good, with an accuracy rate of .90, and a misidentification rate of .00001, which means that only 3,000 innocent people are misidentified as terrorists. With these suppositions, then the probability that people are terrorists given that NSA’s system of surveillance identifies them as terrorists is only p=0.2308, which is far from one and well below flipping a coin. But the numbers aren't quite right because the population of the US is closer to 323 million. Let's assume that only adults aged 15-64 can be terrorists (roughly two thirds of the population). Assuming there are 1,000 terrorists, this means the probability of a randomly picked person in the US being one of them is about one in 213,000. Let's take it to 99% accuracy rate, deeply in the realm of science-fiction. This is not a system that reads your e-mails anymore, it now reads your ****ing mind. With these figures, the probability of Skynet successfully finding a terrorist is an unimpressive 32%, still below a coin toss. The problem is not how good the algorithm is, but how very few terrorists there are compared to the size of the general population, and how many false positives it's going to return. Unless new math has appeared in these past ten years that better allows to calculate probability in this fashion, the date of the article is irrelevant, and Bayes' theorem is as valid today as it was in the 18th century when it was posited. Computer science is not magic.

I got pretty addicted to it, but it took a couple attempts. What helped me was looking at the list of characters available to recruit (save) and then just focusing on finding as many as possible. That was obviously a bit spoilerish, but it kept me interested until the end. Also that biker gang was a bunch of jerks. You have a much higher tolerance than me to bad games. Combat is boring. The constant salvage runs are tedious and repetitive. Characters repeat the same 5-6 lines all the time. Resource management is an exercise in frustration. No stealth option although the game warns you "not to let them hear you". No minimap. I decided to give up after raiding an armory that had the toughest locked doors and most zombies guarding it so far, and coming out with a grand total of four (4) bullets. This game is just terrible. Anyway, on to Age of Decadence.

article date: May 24, 2006 current date: June 13, 2016 post rating: perfect 5/7 I wouldn't expect Bruce to understand elementary statistics or arguments based on them, but failure to count along his fingers is a new low. It's little gems like this that leave little room for doubt that it's a troll account.

Nope

What? How does a mass shooting inspire you to buy a long gun? Unless you are also getting serious training to go along those new toys, they are likely to do you little good in a situation like this, and more than likely to make matters worse. I'm not against people taking self-defense seriously, but responsible, effective EDC is a much more serious commitment than what your knee-jerk reaction suggests, though I may be reading you wrong. Beyond that, yeah. I don't see how these kinds of occurrences could be better prevented, beyond perhaps a more robust early warning/counseling system for people with issues, and more research into the root causes of those issues. I fear that strict(er) gun control laws will just push people to use other means, and laws only affect law-abiding citizens anyway. Not like a bomb vest/pipe bomb is rocket surgery, and you can build one with off-the-shelf stuff.

"Malebonding"? Yeah, leave it to you to elevate lad culture to a sort of essential element of manhood. Nothing especially manly about kicking back with a beer in hand and trading lame **** jokes. I quit "malebonding" in my mid-20s because, frankly, it's boring as ****.

Finally got around to trying Dead State. Looks like crap and runs like crap. Wow. Good thing I'm not a graphics whore, I hope the gameplay is interesting at least; the setting is fairly generic.

So it's like ~1k XP for each $1 spent, right? I've accrued like 50k XP already, and it's only been 3 days. And there's still a bunch of newer games I'm mildly interested in, like Stasis and Age of Decadence. But there's also the older stuff I'm looking at like the SW bundle and VTMB because a lot of disks are missing or damaged, and I'm a lazy bum. I guess I should set a red line and make sure I don't spend more than %f obamas on this sale, or come next month I'm going to really hate myself.

Indeed. Good thing I've been working overtime...

Yes and no. With dual wielding one can reach 5 attacks per round with the Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization with the appropriate class and proficiency level but that limit can be overriden with Improved Haste or (Greater) Whirlwind Attack. As a fun excercise imagine what sort of enemies can stand against a Fighter/Mage with Mirror Image and Stoneskin while dual wielding Foebane under Improved Haste. Kind of bad for the employment rates of clerics. Outside of (Greater) Whirlwind attack, the most I've seen is 6 APR, which seems to be *another* cap. Neither the Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization, nor Belm or (Improved) Haste seem to override the 5 APR cap, but Oil of Speed does, oddly enough. This means that a level 13 Greatsword Grand Master fighter under both Improved Haste and Oil of Speed, with the Gauntlets is capped at 6 APR... just the same as if he were dual-wielding, Belm or otherwise. I play with Spell Revisions, so it's possible that this version of the spell does no longer overcome the 5 APR cap. The sort of enemies that can stand up to the F/M in your example are obviously those of mod encounters... such as aVENGER's Chosen of Cyric (ouch). A pity that BD went the stat inflation route with their LoB mode rather than including Stratagems AI or RR encounters. 83hp rats in Candlekeep? Count me out.

Monks suck in BG, because the class was designed with BG2-ToB in mind. They have worse AC and deal less damage than any other melee character, and even less than thieves because they can't backstab. It's an unarmed-focused class that is better off using a weapon until level 10 or so because their fists don't benefit from proficiency/style bonuses. And due to animation limitations, they can't even use quarterstaves. They had a discussion (before 1.3 IIRC) regarding these problems where they talked about creating an unarmed proficiency to fix some of the issues, as well as other changes (WIS bonus to AC, etc), but ultimately nothing came of it AFAIK. I hope they get around to fixing it at some point, because the current state of the class really warrants some baseline improvements. Archer dominates in BG1 and some parts of BG2, but later on some enemies were given innate resistance to missile damage because **** you, that's why. And even the best bows in BG2 are nothing to write home about, really.

Banks are corporations too, and they routinely take the money you give them and loan it away. They don't even need your permission to do that, because as soon as you make a deposit it's no longer your money, it's the bank's. Sure, the bank is now liable to you for the same amount, but it's not the same, and historical examples have illustrated this difference better than I could. Sure, you could put all your money under your mattress, but good luck paying for your internet, electricity, etc. I don't think that's feasible in this day and age unless you want to live like an Inuit. But if you do, what do you need money for, anyway. You can argue that fractional-reserve banking is only possible because the government allows it, but that's a kind of catch-all reasoning that can be used to blame pretty much anything on the state.

I guess it's important to know what version are you playing, and if you are using any mods. At level 7, warrior classes get 1/2 extra APR, and another 1/2 at level 13. Specialization, Mastery and High Mastery (2 to 4 pips) give you an extra half APR, so that puts you at 5/2. An off-hand weapon gives you a flat 1 extra APR with the off-hand. Problem is that in vanilla BG2 (but not BG1 or IWD), Grand Mastery only added +1 to damage. In BG2EE, the bonus was restored to what it should be, i.e. an extra attack and +1 damage. This puts a level 13 grand master fighter at 7/2 APR, 9/2 with an off-hand weapon. Not too shabby. Speed factor doesn't affect how many attacks you perform in a round, just how early in the round you get to swing. If you aren't playing the EE and even if you are not a fan of mods, I would recommend you at least install the Grand Mastery restoration. Now, you are right. Dual wielding is always superior for two reasons. First and most importantly, it allows you to wield two magical items rather than just one, and outside of Carsomyr, there are no two-handers that are good enough to make up for that. And second, the advantage that a bigger damage die brings to the table, large damage spikes (remember that some greatswords roll D12), is irrelevant in BG because without mods, 1dmg has the same chances of disrupting a spellcaster or causing morale failure than any other amount. It also doesn't help that vanilla two-handed style bonuses are rather laughable, and unless you are Sarevok, there is no Massive Damage. Whether katanas are good enough to specialize your kensai in also depends on whether you are playing the EEs. I found warhammers and axes to be pretty good choices as well, with a good selection throughout the saga.

Someone over at the BD forum made a mod that disallows dual class kensai, but also makes it work more in line with its own description: forcing it to specialize in one weapon that you choose at level 1, and preventing you from putting pips in any other proficiency. I thought it was a good way to rebalance it, but it didn't really sound... fun. Me, I'm more of a Berserker guy. But then that one is broken in its own way... Ask and ye shall receive! (EE-only, haven't tried it myself)