Chindie

America isn't particularly libertarian, at least not to the degree that it's libertarian politicians would like. Levi always argues from that perspective when it comes to things like this. That type of libertarianism is fundamentally a different perspective to the way things are in more or less any country on the planet, and because of that you get very tedious arguments where 1 person argues from the way things are in the current system or the current... political... zeitgeist they were raised in, and the other argues the libertarian viewpoint ad infinitum, and theres not actually an answer thats in anyway definably right so round and round it goes and, if you're like me, you'll get very frustrated. I knew a guy at uni who, I suspect, would argue similar lines to Levi here and, despite being a mate, an argument in a bar over something like this nearly had me swing for him. I had hoped to nip the thing in the bud because it will achieve nothing - Levi will argue till the cows come home that the individual is free to do as they like and face the consequences, and by extension so can companies, provided their actions do not, through no fault of another, affect anyone else (i.e. the Harm Principle, which is the fundamental of a libertarian viewpoint - you are free to do as you like, knowing the consequences for yourself, but to cause harm to another is the be all and end all of a crime). So a person would be free to buy a dangerous medicine and if they didn't know better that the advertised ingredient would kill them, thats their fault. And a company could sell it, and the only recourse to them after the fact would be a court case if their medicine didn't do what it said it would (perhaps). Most societies will argue against that because they would believe that the people may be vulnerable, not knowing better etc, and thus a law needs to be made to prevent them harming themselves. As for a libertarian society not being litigious... it probably encourages litigation more than anything. Everything becomes about contracts in that kind of society, in the purest sense really (as even in our society an awful lot of stuff is at heart a contract, we kind of ignore lots of it), and if you don't hold up your end of the contract, court it is for you, because that is what becomes the check and balance on that society, and not government. (For what it's worth I largely consider myself a social libertarian, which puts a lot of libertarian backs up because they don't like the halfway house, fake libertarianism in their view. I've almost certainly gotten some of the above wrong, incidentally, but fundamentally I think it's correct. And believe you me, if it's not I'll have Levi telling me where I'm wrong ). But yes... it's an argument that will achieve very, very little. It's probably worse than an atheist/religious nutjob argument, because you can at least demonstrate that the nutjobs are wrong in many cases.

Just watched the first 2 episodes of Breaking Bad. It's fantastic.

I think it's in my top 10 games ever. Superb. Undead Nightmare, on the other hand, is a bit crap.

Good idea but unfortunately it's quite easy to just ignore the law, i.e. just put out the advert that hasn't been demonstratably proven. Levi is putting forth an argument from a fundamentally different politico-philosophical standpoint to you and, ultimately, you're going to end up wasting each others time... so it might be better to agree to disagree before this turns into Libertarianism Weekly and we all decide that it'd be better if the army was run by PMCs entirely and that roads should all be privately owned and operated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUkCJDkG3fg. Probably NSFW vid link.

A lot of people thought the tombs where one of the best parts of the game and IIRC there is a reward for doing the lot, so I'd keep at it. The thing with the Assassin's Creed games is, and always has been, that when the parkour/platformy/traversal stuff works, it's excellent. And when it doesn't, it's infuriarating. And the times it doesn't work are always when you're doing a race or a chase. They automated a load of the movement which is why when it works you're doing very little but on screen Ezio is pulling off these great flowing moves, but the automation sometimes interprets your input wrong and you end up with him jumping off the wrong way into 'Game Over!'. And because in the races and chases you don't know whats happening next or where you're going, those input errors occur more often. They've never fixed it. It gradually got better over the games but it still fails once in a while. I've played all of the series to completion and it's clear they improved it over the games (they nail it in Revelations in it's version of the Tombs from 2, they use the camera a lot more effectively to make your inputs more obvious and make it flow better, the downside is you end up sitting there holding up on the stick and little more. This game also largely did away with the race/chase stuff), but it never went away and, in all honesty, unless 3 is a ground up rebuild, I don't think it ever will. They did the same with the fighting. Fundamentally, little changes, but with each game they tinkered. In Brotherhood they take the tedium out of the big fights but adding a system where you easily string together 1 hit kills in a fight if your timing is down, which was a good move, and they also added in the brotherhood mechanic where you can call in some assassin mates to help out. I'd stick at it, it's not a hard game and it's good even with it's faults. The sequel, Brotherhood, is worth a look if you finish 2 and like it, it's basically 2.5 and gameplay wise is probably the pinnacle of the series so far. 2 with Brotherhoods gameplay would have been an immense game.

I think they either forgot to mention it, becuase IIRC he'd been there for donkeys so everyone more or less 'forgot' that he was deaf and it was just normal you didn't talk to Pete (or whatever his name was, it's a while ago now) and he'd not say much, or just expected me to catch on. Or they thought it was funny. Even my brother didn't **** tell me! Anyway... more on topic. Since being made redundant whenever a big letter arrives for me I get a little anxious while I open it because I expect it to be something about a job I've applied for or something to do with the money I'm owed. So had an A4 envelope arrive yesterday and I'm thinking this is probably important. Open it up. See PwC logo. Think, 'Ah, they've sorted my money!'. Nope. They've sent me a letter confirming since I'm owed money I'm now a creditor. I **** knew that 2 weeks ago! Why waste the money sending the bastard letter!?

Really, really did not like Bulletstorm. It didn't make a penny either, hence the sequel being canned.

I liked Mr Scribbles. When I did my work experience way back, I ended up working for the company my brother was at the time, most of the time basically doing office admin and some IT stuff specifically for them (pipeline schematics, mostly), or out of the office with one of their site teams. After the first week they moved me in the office to do something else and sat me next to a new bloke, who never spoke to me. Everyone else in the office would have small talk while you typed away, but this bloke never spoke to me. He'd occasionally turn to me, look at me weirdly, and turn back to his computer. This got on my nerves but I never said a thing. Come the end of my work experience the boss has a word with me and says how they've enjoyed me working there and thanks for the hard work, keep the work boots you've earned them, how've you enjoyed it? So I said thanks and how much Id liked it, apart from Pete, the guy you sat me next to this week, he seems a bit of a dick! The boss completely straight faced looks at me and says '...he's deaf...'. I don't think I've felt quite so bad so quickly. In a way I was glad I was leaving.

She soes have amazing 'assets'. My favourite I have seen so far in the boob-fest that was the 1st episode! It gets better as the series goes on. Pretty much every non-major female character gets them out. Theres a scene in about... the 7th/8th episode (this doesn't spoil any plot), where the director seems to have gone 'Right, we need to do some metaphorical plot exposition, but it's going to be long winded... **** it, lets raunch it the **** up' and you end up with a 5 minute long sex scene while another character talks and uses the sex as a metaphor for the state of the plot at that point in time. Trust me you'll know when that scene happens and you'll be paying rapt attention to whats on screen. :shock: It sounds immense. I don't know why boobs on tv excite me. I can go on the internet and see the whole shebang! It is just the thrill of not expecting it on TV, I suppose. Ep 7. Finger banging lesbianism, featuring that woman in the pic! ...exactly the scene I was thinking of

The combat never gets harder from what I remember. All it does is throw a few more enemies at you and few more challenging enemies. What it does start to do, IIRC (2, Brotherhood and Revelations have become a bit of a blur for me...), is make the stealth sections increasingly awkward and does slightly more complex chases and the like. The Tombs are worth doing in and of themselves. I can't remember what the benefit for doing the other collectible stuff is but it might be worth doing just to extend your enjoyment of the game. It's never a particularly difficult game. I always have associated difficulty in the Assassins Creed games as being brought about by **** ups with the game engine more than it genuinely being hard.

She soes have amazing 'assets'. My favourite I have seen so far in the boob-fest that was the 1st episode! It gets better as the series goes on. Pretty much every non-major female character gets them out. Theres a scene in about... the 7th/8th episode (this doesn't spoil any plot), where the director seems to have gone 'Right, we need to do some metaphorical plot exposition, but it's going to be long winded... **** it, lets raunch it the **** up' and you end up with a 5 minute long sex scene while another character talks and uses the sex as a metaphor for the state of the plot at that point in time. Trust me you'll know when that scene happens and you'll be paying rapt attention to whats on screen.

I kinda liked the nutters/weird clients. Amongst our weirdoes, we had a guy who I swear was a tramp, or on the way to tramphood, who was very keen on his gaming but also didn't have a **** clue what he was on about. He claimed to have been ruined by Roy Walker, he'd been the designer of Catchphrase's mascot Mr Chips you see but they stole the design and never paid him. Every time you dealt with him it was a like a game of agreeing with him, whilst also trying to point him the right direction (which inevitably became the door). We also had a guy who loved his shooters but also wasn't quite the full ticket, liked a drink, and seemed to have some kind of cross between ADHD and tourettes, and dribbled a fair bit. He had twitches and struggled getting his words out, like his brain was a few miles ahead of his mouth but also steeped in that afternoons bar tab. And he also always seemed to be on the verge of flying off the handle constantly, which used to be a little worrying when you had to explain to him how trading things in worked. He never quite gathered the concept of his game having a value to the store, that he could then use towards buying something else. Our best weird guy, though, got known as Mr. Scribbles. Weirds being a little harsh on him, probably, he clearly had a lot of medical conditions and seemed to just be trying to get by as best he could, but whenever he came into store he'd always do something that just made you laugh even if you felt a little bad about it. He was a little Asian chap, used a little walker thing to get about and always, always covered his face with one hand if he had a hand spare, like he was constantly 'facepalm'ing himself. He was deaf and couldn't speak, so you always had to use a pen and paper to do things for him (hence the nickname), and didn't have great English skills. He was a huge Nintendo fanboy, always bought Nintendo stuff, used to walk around in Mario and Zelda t-shirts, and seemed to have an endless supply of retro Nintendo stuff, usually in really good nick, that he'd trade in for absolutely nothing, I told loads of times he was better off selling them online but he never seemed to get what I meant. He'd come up and ask for absurdly rare stuff we'd never have in stock, and then wander out face palming himself. The best thing he ever did was not long after I started at Gamestation, he'd bought some anniversary Mario collection on the Wii that came with a history of Mario DVD as a freebie, which he wanted to trade in. The guy serving him tells him what the game trades for and pointed out he would have to keep the DVD as we didn't trade it in or sell it. And he went mental. Or at least as mental as you can when you've only got some note paper to use. 'BUY THIS! YOU BUY THIS! BUY THIS! GIVE FOR TRADE! BUY THIS!'. Turned into a 4 page argument between him and the guy serving him over this DVD he didn't want and neither did we. I kinda liked serving him because he never caused much fuss (in all honesty he couldn't) and always knew exactly what he wanted, even if it was some incredibly rare Nintendo one off release. Because I was forever telling him we didn't have what he wanted and I couldn't speak to him so I couldn't put up like a disappointed tone in my voice or whatever, I always used to give him a thumbs up and after a while he started doing it back to me, which was kinda cool. Last time I saw him he, completely out of character, bought a PS3 and a load of macho games, shooters and 18s. We figured the constant trading in valuable retro Ninty stuff for nothing finally broke his innocence.

Yep. She's more of a presence in the series than you'd expect at first. Her name's Esmé Bianco. Does a burleseque act, and some modelling work. And I would crawl through fire to get within a mile of her.

It had the right balance with just ads, imo. You got a basic but good service, had some inconvenience but fundamentally still worked, and if you wanted the whizz bang features, you paid. Now effectively you get a resettable time limited demo. With how I listen to music, the 5 per month thing would be useless to me. On the music I listen to, I find now that I just listen to less new music. I can't be arsed, frankly, to go through the hassle of tracking down dodgy downloads. And I don't really have the money to buy much music (the money I do have goes on other interests). So I've got my 40 odd gig of music I've built up over the past 8 years or so and just listen to more of that library and rediscover albums and artists I listened to briefly and set aside. I do wonder if Spotify's library has improved, when I was still using it it seemed that increasing amounts of music was leaving the service, and there was a lot I was interested in that was never on there, Metallica, Tool, etc etc.

As the series goes on (and the second series seems to be following in the same vein), they appear to have a button in the editing room called 'Cut to Sex'. I'm not complaining though, because this woman plays a whore in it. ...Yum.

I saw 30 Minutes or Less at the cinema. It's second only to the Grudge 2 for the worst film I've ever seen in a cinema. And at that film at least I was with a hot girl, 30 Minutes or Less I saw with 3 mates. And yes the Indian guy is about as funny as losing a beloved pet. All the more annoyingly, the film is convinced he's funny as ****.

I've not used Spotify since I last posted in this thread I think. The change to the free user account absolutely killed it for me. It's apparently taken off in the US though.

One of the signees, Farron, has apparently said he shouldn't have signed it 'as it was written', stating it was poorly worded. You'd have thought he'd have noticed that before he signed it.

Thinking about it... he's probably upset more kids than your average paedo.

I believe you can use them again now.

Oh and Davies made a donation to the 'Justice for the 96' charity in the wake of this ridiculousness, of £1000. They refused it.

A comment on the Alan Davies thing from elsewhere that I enjoyed It does seem that Liverpool players using the n-word is perfectly fine but non-Scousers using the H-word is the greatest sin imaginable. I'm amazed that Sheffield Wednesday don't get abuse from them for desecrating the place by playing there every other week.

Lots of people are like that. It's a big part of the reason I never want to work in a shop again. A noticable percentage of the customers are vile people who think they can treat you like shit and get whatever they want, and will play up (it's the best description to use, just like a toddler) if you try to do things correctly, which inevitably will be contrary to what they want. In my time at Gamestation we had people throw over displays, I had a guy chuck stuff at me, a bloke caught red handed stealing insta-played the racism card and then threatened the guy who confronted him with gang retribution after work, had a guy try to manipulate a staff member into giving him a PS3 in exchange/return for something when there was no reason to and subsequently claimed the store was trying to 'rob him' and threw a full blown tantrum, had a guy passive aggressively use a (very wrong) interpretation of consumer rights to brow beat the manager into refunding him for no reason, and amongst all that numerous threats, insults, aggressive conduct, shouting and screaming... And those are just off the top of my head. Only ever lost my temper once though, and I've no patience at all. **** ever serving the public, seriously. The public contains an awful lot of words removed.