Chindie

Trust me on this one, Nigel Farage is not an Everyman. He may be many things, a showman, a bastard, a pugfaced rocket polisher, but he's not an Everyman. He's not bland enough, too arrogant, cocky, self satisfied, outspoken. The only place Nigel Farage might be called an example of an Everyman would be a select number of old school members only clubs near the financial institutions in London. The kind of place where there's emerald green wallpaper over wood panelling on the walls, obscured by a fug of heavy smoke in the air, red leather armchairs occupied by slick haired ageing gents chortling in well cut suits sloshing brandys at 3pm, the hazy dull light refracting through the crystal and glinting in their mad eyes, revealing the subtle hint of pound signs winking back from their pupils.

And Farage. I mean he smokes and drinks in pubs and everything! He's Mr. Everyman, that's part of his appeal. I'm guessing anyway. Crikey, the thought of anyone out there thinking of Nigel Farage as an 'everyman' is terrifying.

Still doesn't explain Iceland. I did. I know, sorry - still, 7% is pretty high for a country that's geographically very isolated Iceland has encouraged immigration as it became a bit of a financial powerhouse - traditionally Iceland has had very very low immigration but when it's economy began to boom a migrant worker numbers crept up and then it became migrant families. It's dropped since their economy went pop, but Iceland is still a place where you can make a lot of money quite easily if you know how. I would not be surprised if the Icelandic government also makes immigration fairly easy - it's isolation and small population has started to cause concerns about genetic diversity, Icelanders are all quite closely related on the scale of thing (to the extent they recently launched an app that let you check if you were about to sleep with your cousin...). They also make it very easy for other Nordic nationals to migrate there.

I don't think they've taken that big of a hit in truth - certainly nothing like the piracy that was running around on other consoles before now. And even then they have already combatted it, somewhat, with the cutting off from Live and so on. I don't have issues with Microsoft combatting piracy at all... however, they need to give and take. Steam gives little as I said, that softens a blow I otherwise dislike (downloads tied to an ecosystem). I don't see where Microsoft are giving in whats been talked about, I do see them taking a lot, particularly grimly consumer rights. I'd also contend that Microsoft are actually less concerned with combatting piracy and rather more concerned with kicking the preowned market into touch. Everything that has come out about this console regarding accounts and licenses strike me rather more to be about the trade in market than it does shady copies, which is ultimately in my view born of misguided corporate greed.

No the beer still costs a fortune Tsk, it's a riot, beer costs nothing now...

It's a combination of things. As said, theres not been a PC second hand game for a very long time and with good reason - piracy was so rife and so easy with PC gaming that they came up with ways to combat it and that largely killed off any second hand market along with the PC market share at the time shrinking to near insignificance compared to the consoles. Steam is also regularly significantly cheaper - I have in the region of 40 titles on my Steam library and I don't think I paid over £20 for more than 2 of them (and in the case of one of those, the title came with 3 other games chucked in). With Steam there are sales constantly - from daily deals to periodic large scale sales that see prices slashed to such a degree the purchase becomes impulse rather than considered. Even outside of sales, besides a couple of big hitters (COD etc) prices are usually set at a not insignificant amount below their console equivalent. And with retailers like GMG and Simpygames there is the ability to pick up bargains on new releases anyway - I got the new Devil May Cry for £13 about 2 weeks after launch. Steam/PC doesn't quite have the problems with backwards compatibility a console does either. A game I bought on steam years ago still works because the PC doesn't change very often, theres not really the issue with playing your old back catalogue there is with, say, the 360's XBLA titles onto the new console. Even where there is a problem, the PC community usually finds ways around it. System Shock 2, a donkeys years old game that pretty much won't work on a modern PC was recently cobbled together to work on a new rig, for instance. And a real big reason why Steam gets a reasonably easy ride - Valve generally have peoples faith. They do things right by their userbase more often than not. Theres even been talk of what happens if Steam ceases to exist, with suggestions leaning towards Valve effectively 'flicking the switch' and having the games you already have downloaded no longer require to sync up to their servers to authenticate and what not - meaning what was there on your harddrive is yours. If Microsoft followed Valve's lead, I'd have far fewer issues with their new console. But they haven't, and they won't.

Agreed. I haven't listened to it enough, but it seems a bit lackluster compared to Boxer and even High Violet. Still great though. I've had it on loop for a bit, and it kind of just flows at a high level throughout. There's not quite the same stand out tracks as on the 2 previous - no fake empire, or Bloodbuzz ohio, but it's high quality all the same. Thats exactly where I find myself with it. The National's best stuff for me is damn near sing along (which is part of why Boxer is such a good album for me, nearly every song has that element of being able to pick up the lyrics and run with it. It's nearly an album that could have had every song released as a single) and this album doesn't, at the mo for me, have the same distinct stand out tracks. The closest it gets for me now is I Should Live in Salt and This is the Last Time. Hopefully a couple of songs give me the ear worm and the album will instantly step up a level for me.

I wouldn't count on Sony doing many things markedly differently. They may not go to the lengths of using a camera to spy on people (which is something) but a lot of the other stuff is going to be on their console too - anti-preowned etc etc. I'm just getting off the console train. Steam has a number of the same issues but frankly, I'm buying things on Steam so cheaply (and Valve has done little to make me believe they're as evil a corporate entity as Microsoft) I don't really care.

The Kinect has to be connected for the console to function. It's no longer an accessory you can ignore, it's a fundamental aspect of the entire console.

Possibly. Depends whether this chap has got something to say about why he did it revolving around a political goal.

Thats the French Army at 50% strength then...

I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Dave. My personal favourite currently, however...

Anyone know how much it would cost to get Hugo Boss to do design and then do a run of brown shirts, red armbands and jackboots? We could make a killing* *In reality, of course, we wouldn't, because thankfully the BNP are still somewhat of an irrelevance, as proven by their releasing such statement on the back of a poor bastard being hacked to death on the street as a way of returning them to the public eye in the hope of swelling their numbers.

The EDL are just a bunch of knuckledragging idiots, the NF with a slightly more popular/less taboo cause. Any excuse to peddle sub-Sun levels of discourse are taken. My point was rather more that what you were saying didn't make sense. We can agree that a bigotted hatred for followers of Islam and racism are different, though. It's just that always have been different.

Memorial Day in the US tomorrow, they're getting out of the way of that as it usually makes viewer figures plummet.

Another thing that's come up on the preowned front. Theres a lot of talk of the system they have for allowing a licence transfer (which is that you would walk into Game, they would let you trade in the game, there would then be a system that notifies Microsoft that that licence has been traded to allow it to be used again, Game would then sell the disc and kick back a cut to Microsoft who distribute a further cut to the publisher etc etc) being with 'retail partners'. 2 things. That system effectively chops off your ability to flog the thing yourself if they don't have any further user to user system. And secondly, as games retailer rag MVC has noted this week, they don't appear to have spoken to smaller retailers about this whole system at all - indie retailers have all pretty much said they're as in the dark as anyone. I don't put it past Microsoft to basically monopolise the market in trading their games by only creating partnerships with certain retailers - i.e. Game and the supermarkets over here. Of course, all of this just discussion of a 'potential scenario', as Microsoft's PR would put it (sweeping up after an exec said something different, obviously).

I very rarely look at on-topic. It's a wasteland. I can recommend walking away from VT for a period entirely, I've done it a few times and come back somewhat refreshed - the personalities that grate on you in your day to day browsing have a much lessened cutting effect when you return.

No it's not the correct usage. Whoever used that is clearly a **** idiot who doesn't have the faintest idea what they're talking about. Islamism is a defined thing, and a very dangerous one. Race and religion don't combine. They only ever do in the eyes of idiots, usually bigots. In which case the correct usage of terms is probably the least of our worries. Anyway, as said, you're looking for the concept of Islamophobia.

Islamism = 'Political Islam', the belief that Islam should guide society and not just the personal sphere. Racism = belief that that the races are distinct biological entities that have an implied hierarchy based on differing attributes leading to bigotry. ? I think you might be looking for the concept of Islamophobia. Religion=/=race

Yes. It's bullshit either way. It's the main reason I don't particularly like downloading things and prefer physical media.

They've not said it. But they will do. Absolute racing certainty that, in time, you will not be able to turn on a 360 and redownload your purchases. It won't be on release of the new console, or perhaps even in the first couple of years, but it'll happen.

The new The National album is pretty good unsurprisingly, but still not as good as Boxer. Also unsurprisingly. Well worth a listen though.

There is going to be XBLA, just not able to play old stuff on the new console. Which includes the stuff I have spent money on? Yes If you want to play any game that you have downloaded onto your 360 from Xbox Live Arcade, you will need to keep your 360 and hook that up again, because they are not transferring over to the new console. The new console has NO backwards compatibility at all, XBLA games on the 360 will not simply be available to Xbox One users (though I'd stake every penny I have that sure enough, in time, they'll miraculously appear as new ports you can buy to enjoy all over again!). And even if you do keep your 360 to play your XBLA games from time to time, if you decide to free up some space on that 360 HDD sometime and delete a game thinking you can just download it again later, don't be so sure - Microsoft will sure as shit turn off all the servers and remove all the ability to redownload those games in time. Basically, the lesson here is simple - don't download a bloody thing from Microsoft from here on in.

I was on a train to Bristol recently and the girl on the seat opposite me, on the other aisle, actually lay down and curled up on the seat and went to sleep. It's one thing having a bit of a kip sat there on a lengthy early morning train journey, but lying down seems that little stage too far. Although saying that at the time I thought it was bizarrely hilarious.

This kind of incident is damn near impossible to stop. It's not far off from a completely random act of violence - it doesn't require much planning, it's not grand enough to require much logistical complexity and that in turn reduces the opportunities to catch the perpetrator beforehand. Unless they were spouting off about it online and/or being constantly surveiled, it's not doable. We have to accept that society will sometimes encounter violence like this. It's a price we pay for the life we lead and, to an extent, a risk we take for our global activity. I'm not saying we shouldn't try to stop people intent on political violence - we certainly should and the job done by the security services in stopping many far grander attempts is laudable - but to stop things like this we would need to cash in more than a little of the freedom we enjoy or significantly threaten proportions of society, in many cases entirely needlessly. I'm not sure that is a road I would like to see the UK journey on.