TheMightyEthan

I can understand opposing abortion because if you believe babies are being murdered then yeah, you should probably try to stop that. I don't share that belief but given that you have it your opposition seems justified. With gay marriage though I am firmly of the opinion that if you don't like it then don't get one and shut the fuck up. Trying to prohibit gay marriage is nothing other than trying to enforce your beliefs on others and that goes against everything this country is supposed to stand for. Also, apparently this ruling is narrower than it first appeared. What the court actually said was that since California has civil unions, which have all the same legal rights as marriage, barring them from actually being "married" was served no purpose other than to discriminate against them, and the court said you can't do that. It didn't address the question of whether the state would be required to give gay couples all the same rights as straight couples, it just said given that the state is doing that it can't deny them the term "marriage."

This. 1000x this.

So what you're saying is they've invented Medigel?

The line should be drawn at consenting adults, just like EVERY OTHER TYPE OF CONTRACT.

I never shot anyone at all the entire game, there was an achievement/trophy for not shooting so when it came to just before the end, where you had to shot the big server things to unlock a door, I didn't have a clue what to do! Finally I realised as long as I didn't shoot an actual person I'd be fine. lol, when I did that achievement I just ran around like an idiot among the servers and got the bad guys to shoot them for me.

Let me rephrase: it would make it illegal for the state to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples, thus making gay marriage de facto legal. Assuming of course that the court said that banning gay marriage generally is illegal. It's possible they wouldn't make such a broad ruling but would rather just say this specific ban is illegal. They could also (and I fear they will) say this ban is just fine.

I enjoyed the being shot at part, because yeah it added challenge and it provided a pretty good motivation for running, I just didn't enjoy the shooting back part (which yeah is easily skippable most of the time).

@FDS: The laws work that way to some extent. If the USSC says it's violates the US constitution to prohibit gay marriage then gay marriage will be allowed in all states, states would be prohibited from prohibiting it, and the only way to overturn that would be another USSC case or a constitutional amendment. A lot of it depends on how the court words its ruling though. In contrast, if the USSC says it's okay for California to ban gay marriage that doesn't automatically ban it it all states, it just would mean that the states would have the power to ban it if they wanted.

*Edit* - Wow, tons of replies while I was writing... I just came in here to link that too: http://www.usatoday....on-8/53000180/1 Even though the ruling aligns with my personal viewpoint I'm still not terribly happy about it. I fear it's too soon for this issue to go to the supreme court and so instead of getting the ruling proponents of gay marriage want we're going to get a ruling that it's absolutely fine for states to ban gay marriage, and that's going to set us back decades. @Dean: California is supposed to be a liberal hippie love fest, but they also have a large Hispanic population, which is predominantly Catholic. After the California Supreme Court said it violated the California constitution to ban gay marriage there was a ballot initiative to amend their constitution to ban it, and part of the strategy was targeting Hispanic Catholics to support the ban (not saying that was the only reason it passed, but it was a large contributor). Now the 9th Circuit federal court said that the amendment violates the US constitution.

Please tell me that's shopped...

Yeah, I still don't understand how anyone thought that they were supposed to shoot things in that game. There's only like 2 or 3 places where I ever pick up a gun.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's not even a dialog option, and at the beginning of the trial someone just reads off the charges, thus describing the events of Arrival. *Edit* - And yeah, I knew that in ME1 he was still a Commander in the Alliance, but you'll notice that every time anyone from the Alliance asks you to do anything it's a request rather than an order. My understanding is that even though he's still in the Alliance his Spectre status trumps that when it comes to his Spectre activities.

Well, I'm not sure if he's a Commander or not during ME2. I don't recall him ever being kicked out of the Alliance military, so it's possible that he was temporarily relieved of duty during his "stay" on Earth, and that's what Anderson is referring to when he says Shepard's reinstated.

Yes, it's the publisher's problem if the game fails, that's the whole point: the publisher carries the risk of the game failing, so they also get a higher cut if it doesn't. It's a balance. And the publisher isn't going to publish a game that it thinks is going to fail, but nothing in business is a sure thing, so it's a big risk. Look at THQ for God's sake.

Okay, couldn't find the video, but I distinctly remember a shot as Shepard was getting on the Normandy with Anderson saying "You've just been reinstated, Commander" or something like that. A google search didn't turn up the video but it did turn up this article which mentions the same thing near the bottom (just above the last screenshot). @HH: There was never anything to reinstate Commander status in ME2, he's confusing Commander rank with Spectre status. But that's correct as to why Shepard's on Earth.

I play basically every game except for FPS and strategy with a gamepad, even on PC.

In the opening of ME3? Because you could get Anderson to reinstate the status in ME2, but it was such a minor thing. It was like a big conversation and then all of a sudden "btw do you want your Spectre status back? Ok let's keep talking" I didn't accept it as part of the story... I mean Shepard had gone rogue and disliked the Alliance somewhat at that point in the story, why would he answer to the council again? Being reinstated as an Alliance Commander is entirely unrelated to being reinstated as a Spectre. The video I'm talking about is from the beginning of ME3. I'll try to find it.

Or perhaps that will be a source of conflict, the fact that Ashley outranks Shepard in the Alliance but Shepard's status as a Spectre gives him complete autonomy. I recall from ME1 even though Shepard was still technically part of the Alliance military Admirals and people wouldn't give him orders, they'd just make requests of him.

I bought it for $15 from Amazon, never got around to playing it, then sold it for like $65 on Amazon later (it was still in the wrapper). I thought that was a good investment.

Sorry, wrote this about 45 mins ago but then got on the phone and forgot to actually post it. Here's why: Developers get paid (whether salaried or hourly or by a roadmap or however) a set amount, whether or not the game is successful (putting aside abuses such as withholding paychecks which are a completely separate issue). The publisher fronts the cash and takes the risk of the game flopping. The devs give up the potential to profit big if the game goes big in exchange for guaranteed payment if the game fails. Wanting to get paid up front for the work AND receive a profit share later is wanting to have your cake and eat it too, and only studios with a fairly sure thing are going to be able to swing that kind of deal.

Dunno, I have seen in one of the videos Anderson saying you're reinstated as Commander in the Alliance military though.

But that treaty establishes that the member states of the EU are bound by certain provisions regarding the rights of their citizens, and establishes a court system for ruling on disputes. It could also be argued that the US Constitution is really just a treaty between (what were at the time) sovereign states, but the states are still bound by it. At their core both the EU and the US are dual-sovereignty entities, and while EU member states (they're referred to as states in the treaties in question) may have have a lot more autonomy than US states do, US states were also once almost entirely autonomous. The parallels are more than just superficial.

Just buy ME3 on PC, it's worth putting up with origin to be able to import your save.

Fuck my retarded eyes. Even KNOWING what the deal is, I still can't make myself see it until they turn it around.

This is just a generalization, but usually "hate crimes" are specifically defined as such in the state laws. So like State X might have a law that defines battery as "willfully or intentionally causing physical contact with another in a rude or insulting manner" and then might have another "hate crime" definition of battery that would be "willfully or intentionally causing physical contact with another in a rude or insulting manner because of that person's race" and would carry a harsher penalty than regular battery. (I just made those laws up as an example.) So if somebody beat up a black guy in order to convict them of the hate crime the prosecutor would have to prove not just that they beat up a black guy but that they did it because of he's black. Regarding hate speech, the first amendment absolutely prohibits the government from punishing you from espousing political or religious viewpoints in a generalized way (i.e. "God hates fags"). In other situations it's a lot more complicated, and you have to start weighing whether the interest in protecting the type of speech involved outweighs any interest in preventing it. So for instance it's okay to make fraudulent speech illegal even though it's speech because the interest in preventing fraud outweighs the interest in protecting your right to say those things, and the same is true of Yant's "fire" example. When you start talking about individuals it gets even more complicated; you probably can't get away with advocating harming an individual, and it's definitely illegal (at least everywhere I know of) to threaten individuals, but you can get away with saying things about them (i.e. "Steve is going to hell because he's a fag" is probably okay as long as Steve actually is gay; if Steve's not gay then it's slander). But generally the idea that someone could get in trouble for expressing a viewpoint is very alien, and even shocking, to most Americans, hate speech or not. @6264: The Swedish court overturning a ruling because it violates a European law doesn't seem any weirder to me than an Oklahoma court overturning a ruling because it violates a Federal law.