Thursday Next

With regard to Zimmerman one of the key considerations (and I'm assuming that we are all agreed that Martin death was wrongful morally if not legally) in my opinion is this: Is there a real risk that this will happen again? From what I've read for the safety of other people in the neighbourhood Zimmerman should have been locked up. As it stands he has been vindicated for stalking someone which resulted in a altercation leading him to kill someone. What's to stop Zimmerman from doing the exact same thing again? I'm assuming he still has his gun license and now anyone who sees him following is going to be even more likely to react extremely given that they are probably in a life or death situation. For the sake of public safety the guy should have been locked up and psychologically evaluated. He's gonna end up killing again in similar circumstances or get himself killed one of these days.

When you say "got", it makes me wonder if you successfully hunted them.

I think Kickstarter terms are pretty clear, you pays your money you takes your chances. KS keep at arms length as much as possible. If the project fails because your reach exceeded your grasp then you are under no obligation to return any money to your backers. The FAQ is just giving some PR advice. Legally, unless you have been doing something other than using the money to make the project then I don't think a backer would be able to recover their pledge.In the UK bringing a small claim will cost you £25 and going beyond that to actually recover your money you are looking at around £100 - £150, so unless you backed for £100 plus it's not even worth trying to recover your pledge, not that I think you'd succeed anyway. That's why I think what DF are doing sucks so much. Beyond a bit of a dent to their reputation they have taken no risks themselves and have been careless with other people's money. Now, if you are going to be careless with the money of EA, or Activision or some other EvilCorp™ then fine. They're big enough and ugly enough to take care of themselves and can do stuff like sue DF to get at least some of their money back or take control of the IP themselves and finish it. In this instance though, DF have been careless with the money of their biggest, most loyal fans, I'm sure some of those fans considered the backing pledge to be a significant amount of money, but worth it to support a team they believe in. The worst part of it is (to my mind) that having blown past several budgets DF don't even seem slightly apologetic. Instead they seem to be trying to suck in even more cash to throw down their apparently bottomless money pit, so I don't think any lessons are being learned along the way. I can just see this spiralling out of control until it is vastly over budget, massively delayed and has been gutted just to eventually get something out the door. Sadly, it's a ringing endorsement for overbearing, interfering publishers who would have kept a far tighter rein on expenses and ensured that some sort of dev schedule was adhered to.

Yeah, it's pretty much the same as the UK in that respect. Assault is harming or causing someone to fear harm to their person or property, scale goes up from there ABH, GBH etc. Then using a weapon always tacks on the "aggravated" which ups the sentence a fair bit. None of which explains the other guy getting off scott free.

Don't know about classist. I can afford games I just don't have time to play them. Especially when the weather is good. Between working 09:00 to 18:00, and socialising in the evening I've had very little time to play The Last of Us. Working in the games industry makes it very difficult to not have things spoiled. Which brings me to my next point. I don't (with a few exceptions) know what games people like, nor do I know what they are playing now, waiting to play, or want to play when the price drops. By the same token, I don't expect anyone else to know the same about me. As such, the onus is on me to let people know where I am in a given story line before engaging in conversation. Generally it's unusual for people to post plot twists in clear view. I don't see many spoilers revealed over, say, Twitter and forums tend to hide spoilers. It sounds like this bloke wants to talk about what everyone else is talking about, but feels left out because he either has to bail out of discussions before he gets spoiled or he has to accept that he will see plot points before he reaches them. I understand that this makes him feel lonely, especially when he has marked himself out as a critic and so is expected to know what is going on in the latest big thing, but I really don't know what he expects the world to do. I'm pretty sure that I'll be able to find people to talk to about TLoU when I eventually finish it, I know that I still love chatting about ASoIaF even though I read the books twice and have talked about it loads. Going through that journey again with a new person is great, it reinvigorates the story for me.

Might as well chuck in my 2 cents. - The Android ecosystem officially accepts rooting. HTC provide bootloader unlocking on their website http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader With a lot of caveats about how stuff may not work. - As rooting is an accepted practice it is common for apps on the Play store to say "Root Required" or "Will not work on rooted devices." - The Apple ecosystem does not accept rooting as a legitimate practice. Apple's ToS discourages making such changes. - As such, when you root an iOS device you acknowledge that you are going "off piste" so to speak. - To my mind, once you do that all bets are off. Software *should* all work fine. But. If a developer decides that I should sit on the naughty step for breaking the house rules then I personally think it's a fair cop. Not sure how many people bought Deus Ex and have a jailbroken device, but I bet it's a tiny amount. I think it's interesting that they are looking into ways to prevent piracy on mobiles. This experiment didn't pay off, but they've learned from it and we can all move on.

Been there a few times now. Epic terrain. Can't wait to ride it again. If you happen to be in the Longhorn between the 21st January and the 4th February, I'll get the drinks in. On topic: Does anyone know if old PS2 saves will work with the remaster? Doesn't seem likely. Anyone tried it with say Ico or Shadow?

A large publisher would probably say "Here is an advance of $X." They would expect the dev to make the game with that amount. If the game was over budget then the publisher would either say. "This looks like it will be amazing and sell a mega-fuck-tonne we're going to give you some more cash, but we're tightening the reins to make sure you stay on target." or "We've lost confidence in this. Finish it as best you can and we'll try to recoup what we can." Game development costs don't increase exponentially when you localise into a couple of extra languages. If Double Fine had released a $400k game on time no one would have any room to complain. If one billion people had backed Pebble that doesn't mean that Pebble should make diamond encrusted watches because they have loads more money now. It means they release the $100 each (or whatever it was) watch they said they would in the first place when they said they would (though you could probably forgive them for being a bit slow on delivering to 1/7th of the world's population). EDIT: I think what's being overlooked is the value of the finished product versus the cost to make it. Even though the total funding was in the millions, each individual only paid $10 to get the game (not a pre-order blah blah). As such everyone should expect a $10 value game. If EA pay a developer $4million it's because they expect a $4million cost game.

I thought it was great. I still find the minion antics highly amusing. The love story worked, chemistry was good. Nefario had a decent turn as well. Agnes was cute, Margo was serious and Edith was... Edith. It was more of the same, but I liked the first one and I liked this one too.

Whistler to be precise. For two weeks.

Getting this for Vita one way or another. It will make my flight to Canada in the winter seem too short.

Hunting, along with the bow and arrow are requirements for all games. The publishers agreed this between them, hence, Crysis 3, Tomb Raider, The Last of Us, Assassin's Creed 3. GTAV better have a bow and/or arrow. Otherwise, it's a no buy.

Meh, I doubt it will be a significant factor. As you say, if this is all people have to moan about...

Oh, well in that case fair enough. *I'd* still be upset because *I* would have wanted a low-fi Maniac Mansion / Day of the Tentacle type thing. Not some high falooting, magnum opus of a game. But if that's what I signed up to. I'd swallow my disappointment down in the pit of my stomach like a proper English man.

Well, presumably this uses three (RGB) or more leds to make the different colours. So that's at least three times the power of a single LED. Of course, three times bollocks all, is still bollocks all.

Ok, I get that it's not a pre-order service per se. But DF have still asked for money and promised to deliver a product in a time frame. If I give a colleague £5 to grab me a burger for lunch, and they disappear until my evening meal where upon they appear with a steak dinner, I would be annoyed. They offered something, they gave a time scale and they came back with something totally different much later than I wanted it. Yes, a steak dinner is better than a burger. Yes, I am getting more for my money. But I didn't want a steak dinner worth £20, I wanted a burger lunch worth the £5 I gave the guy. People who backed DFA didn't back a $4million 2 year project. They backed a $400k 8 month project. That's what DF committed to, and that's what they should have delivered.

Ok, so let's first establish that I think that people's rights, to life, to liberty, to free speech are A Good Thing™ it's not the rights that I don't agree with, it'd the legislative tool. In the same way that I think that brain surgery is good, but do not think that a sledgehammer is the best tool with which to perform it. There is no sense in the HRA (or the European Convention of Human Rights) that the needs of many may outweigh the needs of the one. Such that incredibly disruptive children are allowed into classrooms because they have a "right to an education" with little regard given to the quality of education that the children in the class that the disruptive child is foisted on will receive as a result. Similarly, 9 Afghani plane hijackers, criminals who threatened the lives of others on a plane could not be deported because they may face torture in their home country, later they also went to court because they were denied the right to work. Not to mention the much maligned Abu Qatada. One thing I find rather... interesting is that Jordan have only agreed not to "use evidence obtained by torture against him". I have seen no mention of not torturing him just for the hell of it. The next problem I have with the HRA/ECHR. It's all give and no take. "You have a right to this, you have a right to that," but it imposes no responsibilities on the people it confers rights on. For example, people who commit crimes serious enough to warrant imprisonment are to be allowed to vote while imprisoned, because a blanket ban is against their rights. I have no issue with people who have served their sentence voting, but not someone who is currently serving a sentence. Part of the punishment aspect of prison is the loss of rights, the right to vote should be one of those lost rights. I also don't like that the HRA doesn't just protect "natural" human rights, it also protects "economic rights". The right to peaceful enjoyment of one's possessions for example, is odd and seems to favour the rich at the expense of the poor, especially in countries where the rich/poor divide is very large. Most of the criticisms though seem to be around the role of the European Court of Human Rights. Having an essentially federal court making decisions for sovereign states means that often that states societal norms, culture, rule of law are not taken into account. As I said to Dean though, I'm really not an expert on this. Some convincing arguments in favour http://www.supremecourt.gov.uk/docs/speech_111103.pdf and against http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/publications/bringing%20rights%20back%20home%20-%20feb%2011.pdf are much better articulated. I would actually welcome something along the lines of the "Bill of Rights and Responsibilities to restore some balance to the whole affair. Edit: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23230419 ECtHR has just ruled that "Life without Possibility of Parole" is against human rights. This doesn't mean you can't be imprisoned for life, it just means you have the right to a pointless interview where you say "I am not going to murder people any more.", we say "Yeah right(!)" and stuff you back in your cell.

I disagree. They were backed to make "X" game. Provided all the backers got what they were promised then there should be no ill feelings. You were promised a DF adventure game, you got one. Stretch goals are nice and all. But you've got to deliver on what you promised in the first place before trying to tack more on. I'd rather have a $400,000 game than not have a $4,000,000 game. From another perspective, now that FTL has (presumably) made way more in sales than the Kickstarter fund does that mean the game should now magically be better? If the devs knew in advance that it would make that much money, should they have spent more making it better? The fact that DF got a large % of their sales up front (via KS) does not mean that the team has to use all that money, there is no requirement to account for it. Everyone paid what? $10 for the game? So everyone should expect a $10, not a $60 AAA multi million budget title. If I had backed this, I would be pissed. It's a bait and switch, but worse because you don't even get the switch.

Oh dear. Clumsy, clumsy dialogue. But the combat looks fluid and I love the dress sphere system from X-2. Still excited for this one.

Maybe, but at least it wouldn't have cost you anything.

Wouldn't have happened if they'd had EA cracking the whip.

I read the book. Thought it was genre defining and was hugely excited to see it played out on screen. What I got was a 28 Days Later film that was mostly concerned with action set-pieces and some very good, deeper, talky bits. Edit: That said, it has some gaping plot holes, and I would have preferred a closer adaptation, with shambling zombies instead of fast ones, but setting aside the title, this is a good action-zombie film.

Yup, agreed. Didn't need the "World War Z" moniker. It felt more like a 28 Days Later film. I always preferred the book and original Dawn of the Dead film version of zombies. The idea that the Zombies are unstoppable the way a glacier is, rather than the tidal wave that they are depicted as these days is more appealing somehow. Largely I suppose because the former is more alien a concept.

Completed Mirror's Edge again, felt inspired by the announce of the Prequel / Sequel / Equel / Reboot / what have you.