MontyMM

Marked as solved. And also as Best Thread Title of the Week. :P

I think it could be improved by mixing it up a little bit. The thing I find odd is that they're all so neatly matching, back to back, in every case - seems too perfect to me. Perhaps on a major road border near a city, we might see banners for that keep. But perhaps others could just be wooden markers, some well kept, others overgrown and mossy, and so on.

No, not necessarily - I was just responding to Phosphor's reference to the Romans. I don't think insisting on holding a fantasy planet to a fixed period of Earth history would make too much sense. Having said that, every single structure in Skyrim appears to be built of some combination of wood and stone. There are lumber mills all over the place, and all other road signs are made of wood. All I'm saying is that I find it fairly implausible that any society, including the present day, would use cloth as the medium for a system of permanent markers on a road system, and I find it a bit jarring. If there was some type of manned checkpoint, or a town that fell right on the border, banners there would make sense to me. As I said though, it's not a cut and dried argument, just how I see it. If others like them, that's great!

Yikes - I didn't think you owed us that much! We've only recently finished paying you back for the loan you gave us to put the place back together in 1946 - true story! :P But it's not the interest payments that worry me, it's that the global economy is so fragile after the collapse of 2007. Playing chicken with financial reputation of Economy No 1 at this time is just madness, and I'm not sure they understand how easily we could all slide back into something even worse than the Great Depression. It's interesting what you suggest, as that gives a sort of mixed answer to my question - that this movement started out as a calculated and well-organised project by special interests, but has now gone rogue and serves no-one. That would certainly fit what we see. I know for example that there are some very unhappy Republicans on Wall Street, who are very clear that this is getting out of hand.Â

Well, again, mine is only an outside perspective. I'm not a partisan who likes to yell names at the opposition, and I can totally respect a position of fiscal conservatism. But, I have to say that I have never seen anything remotely like the degree of reckless obstructionism that I've seen during the Obama administration. I'm not looking at it in a party-political way, but I'm simply curious about it as an extraordinary phenomena - asking how did it come about, and why does it behave the way it does? The slight problem I have with their calls for compromise on a number of issues, is that they appear to be rather dishonest; they seem to keep doing it even after a matter is democratically settled. The aim seems to be - compromise on the initial question, and split the difference. Then, shortly afterwards, demand more compromise on what has been settled and agreed; to split the difference again and again, under pain of reckless threats to the functioning of the country, until they've whittled what they've lost down to nothing, and fully got their way. I think that behaviour is something new, or at least I've never seen anything quite like it. To me, it goes beyond a political discussion (which I wouldn't want to get involved in), to what appears to be a breakdown in the rational and civilized standards of behaviour that are needed for a democracy to function. And we all really need the US to function!

Right - this is what I find curious. We certainly have our share of batshit political groups, some of them far nastier at heart than the Teabaggers. They might even occasionally win a council seat or two in some benighted and backwards part of the country. But I find it really extraordinary that they can infect what was a respectable and serious political party, the only party of opposition, and potentially drag the largest economy on the planet to a standstill.

Yes, I subscribe to the paper edition of the Guardian, and the serious content is excellent. The web edition annoys me a bit, because they have to include quite a lot of click-bait ******** ("send us photos of your dog looking funny!", "Poll - Did Miley Cyrus go too far by getting her bum out?") But, that's probably unavoidable, as, like most serious newspapers, it mostly loses money. With regard to the whole Democrat/Republican situation, I don't have a horse in that race. But, I think the Teabagger wing of the GOP are so deluded and dangerous that it becomes a larger concern than US domestic politics. They should scare the hell out of everyone. What I can't really decide, is whether these people are actually real. Can anyone actually think like that, or are they a calculated performance, massively insulting everyone's intelligence?

Apparently, BF4 is going to a get an updated version built for AMD Mantle in the next couple of months, and Frostbite 3 will support it in all future games. I'll be very curious to hear from AMD owners how the performance compares when this arrives.

Well, anything's possible, but certainly in the ancient world textiles and dyes would have been more valuable and difficult to produce than a bit of wood or stone carving. It's not a cut and dried argument, I just personally find it a bit unnatural and unlikely.

Ancient boundary markers were always made of stone - the maintenance of permanent banners on every road, constantly exposed to the elements, made of primitive materials and dyes, would not have been very practical. I agree that they would be appropriate in some places - you could imagine the imperials being fond of them in key positions to make a point. But I find that this system looks too uniform in position and design - it is as if there is a mutually agreed set of design standards across all holds, maintained consistently on all roads as cloth banners. For me, that doesn't seem very likely.

Excellent. I'm not actually that into the game itself, but I'm very keen to see what they're doing with the new Frostbite engine. I'm hoping for Bioware to return with a vengeance with the open-world Dragon Age Inquisition game on the FB3 engine. Could be sweet.

Yes, I don't think the shutdown is that big a problem in itself, except insofar as it hurts a lot of vulnerable people. What worries me most (and, it seems, the markets), is that these nutcases might just be crazy enough to drag this to an actual US debt default. That would be another ballgame entirely, and just the spectre of it could do enormous damage. I totally agree on the media situation - quality newspapers and journals are still the way to go. TV news in general - you might as well listen to a dog bark at you from the back of a car.

I like the idea, but I wonder if they are a bit too consistently placed - I'm not sure they'd be quite so perfectly managed, back to back at every "state border".

The great irony is that by holding a gun to the economy's head at this delicate time, they could create another economic collapse that could be as serious as the real problems you mention, for the whole world. Their attitude beggars belief - they lost the election to a party that had Obamacare as part of its manifesto, they lost in their opposition to the bill in the first place, and now they threaten to drive the country off a cliff... all the while accusing the Whitehouse of failing to compromise! You don't compromise on what you've already won, unless you have raisins in your braincase. That's like finding a burglar in your kitchen, and saying, "OK, let's split the difference and you take half my stuff." :P

I think the new ones are an improvement. The old version looks too reflective - like rocks with seams of pyrite, rather than a layer of moss.

The Vivid Landscape gang like to use moss quite heavily, it seems. Personally, I like it. Probably the best point of reference for this type of landscape that I've seen is the Isle of Skye. Moss is quite dominant on most rocks and structures, blending them into the landscape, which is the effect they seem to be going for.

The UK is very similar to the US in that regard - we are made up of four united states, each with their own government, their own taxation powers and budgets, and each of those broken down into county councils, again with their own arrangements.

That's true, and the political dance around tax and spending will always go on, in every country, and health provision costs are always a challenge. But, when you look at health spending as a fraction of GDP, in most developed countries it's around 10%, whereas in the US it's nearer 20%. That difference is largely an obscene and destructive profit margin. The German health system was mentioned, and I believe it does work well. I think the reason for this is something that has made Germany particularly successful - they tend to have rational and functional internal business relationships. They have this in their industries, where the trade unions tend to sit on the boards of companies in a co-operative and productive way. The also have this in their healthcare system, where prices, terms and complex agreements are worked out regularly between industry, doctors, local government, patients representatives, and so on. This seems to be a cultural advantage - they are certainly not "socialist", but they seem to consider the value of society as a whole, rather than rather dementedly (and perhaps fearfully) trying to make a fast buck at everyone else's expense. I'm afraid we see rather more of that mindset in the UK and the US.

I'm an outsider too, but I've been following this story, as ultimately it really does have implications for the global economy. It looks to me like vested interests have used the usual stooges to create a phony debate about the government imposing itself into people's health care choices. This seems a very disingenuous line of argument. To argue against government imposition is perfectly reasonable in itself, but the forces that control the ridiculously inefficient and profiteering health system today surely represent a power bloc every bit as immane as a government. To put it another way, I can understand why some people might say, "Keep the government out of my doctors office!" But, take a look at the nature of the entity that is currently "in your doctor's office" with you, and the objection makes less sense. These vast corporate interests have arguably even more control over people's lives, have absolutely no duty to anyone but themselves, are unelected and unaccountable, and spend billions bending the actual government to their will. The fact is that big money has gone global - the money doesn't have to "trickle down" when it can trickle out. These interest groups have no qualms about driving the US into the ground, and the current health care spending could do just that. The big problem with Obamacare is that it didn't have the tenacity to root these buggers out, but merely forces them to offer more coverage and better terms - which means they just pass these costs on to the struggling middle class, and carry on with business as usual. That's how it appears to me, anyway.

I wasn't questioning the details of the German healthcare system, I just thought it was a rather surprising comment in a thread where people are talking about being hard pressed by their health care situation.

Perhaps I misunderstood, but I thought that EnableCompression = true has always been the hardcoded default in ENBboost, and the inclusion of the setting is only to give the option of disabling it, by setting it to false.

It'd be great if some of you magic experts could define a fairly simple magic pack, describing how to blend the best mods together for a really good, balanced mage experience. I'd like to use a solid magic overhaul alongside the pack I've been talking about. I found the magic-user experience to be pretty convincingly nerfed (as Kelmych puts it), and have never persevered enough with it to get a sense of the best mods to improve it.

Excellent - thanks Aiyen!

Looks very interesting - thanks guys. With COT, one of my main reservations is that in fine conditions, the blue skies sometimes have too much violet in them, making them look unnatural. This often coincides with slightly golden clouds, and the contrast exacerbates the unnatural effect. Anyone else noticed this, or perhaps even knows the offending weather type(s) that could perhaps be patched out? Also, does anyone know about modifying the chances of different weather types? I would personally like to see fine, alpine weather far more often, with the other weather types appearing more rarely, but often enough to keep things interesting.