Vapymid

I don't know about the next world war and death camps. I hope it won't come to that. But just as Versailles made the Second World War inevitable, so the Western policies towards Russia and the FSU countries have led to this crisis - that's the gist of Prof. Sachs's opinion and I tend to agree with him on that. Regards

Oh, you have a robotic chair like this? Regards

LOL! I never wore that kind of beard Regards

I don't know where you are getting this from, guys? Whenever I play Half-Life, Freeman comes across as a perfectly well-rounded and intelligent individual, not suffering from any controlled substances dependency or addiction... Well, he may have a slight Russian accent but he is not saying much anyway, right? Regards

An interesting opinion piece on the BBC... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30483873 Regards

Yes, China will definitely get the most out of their upper hand negotiating position. Maybe that will finally break the back of Gazprom, which won't be a bad thing, actually. Regards

What is 20 years? The decline and collapse of the Roman Empire (the Western Empire, actually, but this is what the public thinks of as the Roman Empire) lasted 300-odd years and the Eastern Empire lasted another 1,000 years after that, until the Turks took over... A comparison of the USA with the Roman Empire (or of any other empire with another empire) may be valid if people know what they are talking about but most often, when it is used to make specific short-term predictions, is completely nonsensical. Regards

German automobile, EU agricultural industries, winemakers, livestock producers - all are losing the market they were counting on for growth for the economic recovery. Germans have to forget about importing electricity from Ukraine for the foreseeable future as the fuel is either the Russian gas or Donbass coal. The French have built a whole aircraft carrier for which they may now not have a customer AND have to pay compensation for breach of contract. Not to say that never again anyone in the world will trust them with a contract like that if they finally reneg on the Russians (I doubt they will, though). Scoittish fisheries are losing mackerel supply contracts to Iceland (having supplied Russia since before the break-up of the USSR). UK hi-tech underwater ROV and exploration equipment manufacturers have lost contracts with Russia overnight. These are just a few off the top of my head... That's too bad... I am giving here my opinion and analysis based on my knowledge and/or personal experience of living in both worlds - Russia and the West. But getting "you lie" or "you're a mouthpiece of RT" in response to anything that goes outside your comfort zone is growing old very quickly. Regards

Yes, the oil price is what is going to screw Russia's economy now, not so much sanctions - those hurt the EU and UK the most. Putin's government is using the sanctions to put pressure on the remaining "oligarchs" and to consolidate the power of the real oligarchy - the "siloviky"-based circle around himself. As to the other stuff - it's difficult to argue on political matters with a believer. All I can do is to point at obvious conclusions and motivations of the parties involved. Proof? If you want proof in the matters of diplomacy and foreign policy - we need to wait a few years until a whistleblower leaks the relevant facts and documents... Although, wait a second - there was a proof of the nefarious involvement, when Nuland was caught red-handed in behind-the-scenes power play, but you have already rationalised that away as not meaning what it means and not being what it seems and not being anything other than the ordinary planting of the flag of freedom in a far-away land, anyhow But it's funny, talking about an "untrustworthy referendum" in Ukraine, at the time when the country did not even have a legitimate government. But, of course, it is very convenient where other arguments are lacking. Regards

My "support" for Russia in the Ukrainian situation is not so much a support of Russia as criticism of the Western position and the actions of the official Ukrainian authorities. It's certainly not "blind" and I explained my reasons for it in many previous posts in this thread and so won't go through all of that again. As to the atrocities - both sides have committed them. The actual number of casualties is not known and the information is suppressed. There are reasons to believe that the official number of casualties among the Ukrainian army is particularly heavily under-reported. It is clear, however, that casualties among the civilian population run in the thousands, many more are displaced, the economy of the region - not in a very good shape to start with - is ruined and all of that has happened for no rational reason at all. The Ukrainian government must carry most of the blame and responsibility for this because - a) they did not have to start the military action, they could negotiate instead; b) they will negotiate in the end as there is no other way out of it; c) they could have achieved the (b) without the (a) above. The US is to blame because they have encouraged (if not forced) the Ukrainian government to resort to the (a), thus knowingly condemning thousands of people to death in exchange for scoring some short-term political goals against Russia and the EU. The EU is to blame because they have stupidly allowed themselves to be drawn into an economic war with Russia, sleepwalking into a disaster. The UK is to blame because they have acted as a US puppet, helping to undermine both the EU and the Russian positions in the hope of scoring some short-term political points. And Russia is to blame for... well, for behaving in exactly the way the US have been expecting them to behave and so walking right into the diplomatic trap set out for them. Also, for doing that not exactly without knowledge of the likely consequences, in order to achieve some short-term domestic policy aims. Regards

Not sure which country you're talking about... Iraq? Lybia? Afghanistan, perhaps? Apparently, it is for a lot of people. Easier to cling on to a convenient scary tale about some far-away land than to admit the unpleasant truth that your own place may not be much better morally, if not materially. You know, a bit like "Luke, I am your father!", "Noooooooo!!!!" only with worse consequences Regards

To be fair, that's exactly what Putin was suggesting before Kiev started the war against the people who were supposed to be their compatriots. Rigging or not, the vote clearly was representative of the real public opinion there. People who are trying to convince themselves otherwise are living in denial. Is it more comfortable to support continued killing of civilians than to accept that those people may actually genuinely prefer to be part of Russia or at least be shielded from being controlled by a hostile regime? It is very clear that as long as the war continues Russia will not drop its support of the rebels. For how long do you propose postponing the inevitable? Regards

Depends on what you this is a reasonable price... If you search for "antique musket replica" you'll get a lot of hits, like this one, for example (USD 223.30) Civil War 3 Band Enfield Musket Regards

Well, there is always the option of sending them flowers or, perhaps, air-dropping some teddy bears... Regards

You? And "gain more beneficial parts of the country" - LOL, clearly you have never been to that neck of the woods (but I don't blame you). Anyway, I think I have made my own views on the whole situation and its possible resolution abundantly clear, I see no point repeating it all again. However, I would not mind hearing what could be your proposed solutions? Regards

Yes, by the time it gets to the player it is all remuxed but for authoring the best is to have separate streams. Otherwise the authoring software has to break them apart as it must re-packetise everything, add Nav packs, set chapters, Rew and FFwd points, subpictures, etc, then multiplex everything again. Regards

L6htH064TRY Seems like this song has borrowed from DOOM I or ][ soundtrack, like the one by Haken I posted earlier... Regards

Bowing to the inevitable... Kerry says any Iran strikes 'positive' Regards

How can the West solve its Ukraine problem? A strangely level-headed article about Ukraine on the BBC... Regards

If your PC's video card has an analogue (composite) video out you can buy a mini-DV camera (the one that uses small DV tapes) - they cost peanuts now - and use that for recording. Make sure you turn vertical sync ON in the game's settings. The good thing about mini-DV is that it encodes the stream digitally (DV codec is a version of MJPEG) and you can capture the footage back onto the PC for frame-accurate editing. You won't get 50fps though. The bad thing is that it may be interlaced (depends on the card's output), so will need care during editing. Regards

Can it produce elementary streams (video and audio, in separate files each)? That would be ideal. Regards

If someone would trouble themselves with encoding the assets (audio and video to DVD specs - see below) I can do the authoring. We can then put the compiled VIDEO_TS on torrent. If we don't charge anything for that then it will be no different than FM being available for download or on Youtube and I doubt Valve will complain... Regards P.S. The relevant DVD specs: Video - 720x480 29.97fps. This is the same for both 4:3 and 16:9 material. Recommend VBR at 5000kbps, 12 frames per GOP, open GOPs are OK. Audio - 2 channels at 48kHz, 16bit. Either LPCM at 1536kbps (I will encode then) or AC3 at 224kbps, if the latter - recommend using WAV2AC3 default settings for encoding.

Sorry, but nobody mentioned the G-Man and his secretive employers? They have probably had a backup plan, just in case one of their operatives would go rogue or manage to knock himself out of consideration? Regards

Instead of cutting off the bits, the clips can have chapter points added at the relevant places, then you can have a GPRM flag set to either play whole clips or skip over the unwanted chapters. That would be fairly easy to do... Regards

HQiF1NZMPEE Regards