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Aye, Penblwydd Hapus Dai! (Happy Birthay Dave!) Have a good one with many happy returns of the day!

Congratulations!

Hahahahah! That would be the best episode of Yes Prime Minister ever! Totally epic post!

Here here!

http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/stabbedmarine.asp

סמאל‎ (Samael) Because we don't know yet just how good or bad it will be, but one thing is certain.. it will fly.. and those stupid enough to be in its sights will die.. It's a fair assumption the heafty ECM and integrated stealth, advanced avionics etc will make it a seducer as well as a destroyer.. not sure about accuser though. (Edit: Just emailed that suggestion off to them, you never know, maybe the chosen suggestion gets a prize of free ride in one? I wish lol )

Falcon 4.0 Allied Force really is an awesome sim! Especially with upgrades such as Hitiles Terrain and Ayes High resolution cockpits installed, then it looks ten time better. If you get bored of Allied Force (that would take a loooong time imho) then you can always give Free Falcon 5.5.5 a try.. 99% of the stuff you will learn with Allied Force will be the same in Free Falcon in terms of procedures, buttons and so on, but Free Falcon is undeniably prettier than Allied Force and you can also play other aircraft such as the A-10.. although personally I find it a little annoying that all the other planes are basically limited to using avionics tweaked from the F-16 avionics core built into the sim, then again.. tons less annoying than being stuck in an ultra light sim like Hawks and others, even if you only fly the F-16 varieties in Free Falcon, it can still add a lot of variety and an "ooh" factor alongside Allied Force.

There were plenty of opportunities to track down and eliminate several bogey men like OBL over the years, and a hell of a lot of lives might have been saved. Sadly though, what can seem perfectly "intelligent" even to some Politicians no doubt, would be deemed "unethical" and perhaps even indictable by the vast majority of people in the country, and even in the Military bureaucracy. Clinton refused to authorise assassinations of non US nationals on foreign soil, seems pretty standard fair to me, I don't hear the same complaints about tough guy leaders not taking the countless oppertunities to take out various rebel leaders, terrorists, even state players, that could be done easily in many cases and avoid all kinds of bloodshed.. for example, Maggy was ok with sinking the fleeing Belgrano, but not with the spies recording the time, place, and colour of Galtieris sh!ts to just drop him some poison over dinner? The Ninja way of warfare is often decried as unethical, lacking in the "honour" of the Samurai way (who were many times little more than rent collecting thugs with their iconic weapons perfectly optimized for slicing through unarmed and unarmoured peasants) Which is really the path with most "honour", dragging all and sundry from peasant to Samurai onto a battlefield and fighting it down to the last man, or sneaking over the castle wall and strangling a SOB in his bed in the middle of night? We live in a strange world.. So given the impracticalities of countries just going around and assassinating people it doesn't like whenever and wherever it feels like, what to do when there really isn't much choice in a region as FUBAR as the Middle East? Dual containment perhaps? Regan was hardly a soft liberal by any means, nor Bush Snr, but they both adhered strongly to Dual Containment until circumstances changed. When faced with two threats next door to each other as happened with the Iranians and Saddam, here are some options to consider: A) Assassinate one or both leaderships and hope that "something" sensible comes to replace them... bearing in mind we are talking about Iraq and Iran here sat on the mother of all theological faultlines between Sunni and Shia Islam.. whatever came to replace Saddam in particular was going to cause massive ructions on that fault line as we saw in 2003. B) Do nothing and hope they all just calm down and have a cup of tea and we'll all just be alright. C) Join one of the sides, become their best friend for life and stick by them through everything because we're such good, real, genuine friends D) Support the weaker side that hasn't a hope of winning but only just enough to keep it in the fight long enough to weaken the other, once they've both realised neither of them are strong enough to win decisively, sit back and watch.... E) Assuming you chose option D), you watch the lesser of the two threats go apes**t and invade a much smaller neighbour that had massive oil wealth. Now Saddam, once the lesser of two evils, looks intent on provoking as many Arab countries as possible to join in support of his pan Arab Iraqi Baath movement, which if successful, would make the Iranian revolution look like a damp fart seeing as the Iranian Revolution is Shia led and essentially no other existing country in the Middle East is even remotely majority Shia, the Iranians have good relations instead with minority Shia groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, in contrast to the Baath movement which governed Iraq and Syria at the time and was theoretically an option for pretty much any and all Arab countries in the entire Middle East with the sole exception of Iran. The lesser of the two evils has now become the greater, so go back to the beginning and start again all over from A)... or do as Bush Snr did and acknowledge that Dual Containment had failed, the kak had hit the fan, and something needed doing and doing quickly... There aren't many fluffy easy options in life, reality is not a Disney cartoon. We on a personal one to one level, and much more so on an international, diplomatic level, owe it to ourselves to look after our own interests, deal with the lesser of two evils at time, change our tack according to the changing circumstances, and effectively try our best to balance what is "intelligent" to do, with what is "emotionally" or ethically "acceptable" for us to be caught doing by our own peers.. sometimes dropping a bit of Polonium into the entire Kim Jong Ill family's kimchi might seem like a perfectly rational thing to do, that could end up saving millions of lives.. but we can't always know how these things turn out.. we can't always trust that the resulting power vacuum can be filled with something even half way better in the long run, the risks of consequences and of getting caught just don't add up to justify outright diplomatic Ninjitsu. We could have disposed of Gaddaffi a long time ago, get him out of the way, but we didn't.. even though we had plenty of good reason to over the years from Berlin to Lockerbie to the PIRA ,INLA etc, but because what kind of civil war would we have on our hands then in Libya with the all to distinct possibility of Gaddaffi's forces losing control over their yellowcake, Uranium pentafluoride, SCUD missiles and so on, the risk just wasn't worth it. These aren't areas of the world where we can expect the kind of transition that East Germany went from when they got freedom from the Soviet regime, as we can see now, tribes loyal to Gaddafi will not just sit there quietly letting the opposition take "democratic" control of the country, and back then when the Muslim Brotherhood et al were a lot stronger, taking despots like Mubarak or Gaddafi out just was not an option.. they truly were the lesser of two evils because they were fighting tooth and nail to maintain their own house of cards in power by keeping a death grip on the fundamentalists in their own back yards (preferring instead to assist said fundamentalists away from home) But.. times change. Begrudgingly, and in no small part thanks to Tony Blair's rictus grinning diplomatic performances, Gaddafi gave up the most dangerous material we had to worry about. Over the years he was left in power, rictus grinning diplomacy in full swing, the Islamist options in Libya were pretty much crushed to dust.. similarly in Egypt under Mubarak, his Stasi like security crackdowns while not getting rid of the Islamist groups had forced them to go on the back foot and try alternative methods such as a bit of their own rictus grinning diplomacy in order to try and look and sound a bit less mental. The revolutions couldn't have come at a better time in a way, over the tenure of both Mubarak and Gaddafi, any sooner and the resulting chaos would almost certainly have resulted in enormous, and bad, consequences for all, as it is now, we finally have the option to drop the rictus grins and support a new lesser of two evils should any emerge, and hopefully they will, once the dust starts to settle. While the dust is in the air however, you can bet your left nut that it's not just our diplomats that are frantically Ninjitsuing away trying to work out just who or what is coming next, there will be Matroska doll ninjas, Mandarin ninjas, Cheese eating surrender ninjas, the world and their Uncle will be seeking knowledge and influence in these days, so that on the other end, Politicians and Military Bureaucrats can decide what possible options they have on where they go from here day by day. I doubt these revolutions will be half as scary as they would have been only 10 years ago, but it's still not going to be easy work, then again when was life ever easy?

Hi there. Indeed a lot of things happened with Falcon! My gosh! Where to start?? Well cut a very long story short, the main developments in the Falcon world can be split into 3 major overhauls. First there was the BMS (Bench Mark Sims) group of modders, absolute perfectionists that strove to fix all the bugs of Falcon and make it as realistic as humanly possible.. they modded the game so much they even made their own exe for the game, BMS.exe.. unfortunately, some of the testers for that decided they didn't want to respect the group's perfectionist approach.,. so they released the alpha version of the mod and called themselves and it Open Falcon. Currently their boards are located here: http://www.f4support...Open-Falcon-4.7 The Open Falcon team, although very talented and dedicated in their own right, can't do jack with the BMS.exe (their words not mine, I'm merely paraphrasing) so no major developments are likely to happen in that camp. However, it has long been rumored that the BMS team carried on, but so furious about the release of Open Falcon out of their Alpha work, they basically keep it restricted to a core group of friends and hard core enthusiasts.. some people find this a little hard to take and get pissy at the the thought of people doing something for free, in their own time, and not sharing it with the world and their uncle.. personally I'd say that's their choice but that's just me. Whether or not BMS will one day release their finished mod is a topic that generates a lot of fractious and generally pointless debates seeing as no one from the BMS team itself is actually saying anything.. it's all "friend of a friend" type info at the moment, but you can follow that saga here: http://forums.eagle....0&highlight=bms Ok, so that's the first camp, the second is the Free Falcon team, who have taken the engine way beyond what it was originally, implemented a whole range of other aircraft, from the Tornado to the B-2 Spirit, terrains, campaigns, you name it. It's all for free, and best thing, you don't need any Falcon disc or install. If you do have Falcon installed already, it won't mess with it because it uses different registry entries iirc. The installer and patches (last time I checked they were up to 5.57) can be downloaded from various sites, veterangamers for example, all the information for that group can be found here: http://www.freefalco...rum/content.php The third major group is Allied Force. Allied Force is basically a commercial (for profit) collection of previous patches, mods and so on that were available in the community already, nicely packaged and tweaked. There has been some bad blood that a group would basically make money off incorporating free products, but they have done a lot of the work themselves to be fair.. so rather than presenting it as a bag of stolen groceries, it would be perhaps more honest to describe it as a really well cooked meal.. just the chefs didn't pay for the onions.. or the pepper etc.. What they did buy though, is the right to sell the game for profit and as such you can buy it on disc second hand on Amazon. Don't be expecting any patches though.. all seems very quiet on that front, although it has long been rumored that they may or may not be working on a sequel. More information to be found here: http://www.lead-pursuit.com/news.htm So on to pros and cons, no way intended to be comprehensive, my views only and not representative of anyone else's views here.. I'm sure some will disagree. Current level BMS: Strengths - Hard core, anally retentive, perfectionist in its attempts at realism. Weaknesses - May or may not exist. If it does exist, you have about as much chance of finding it as getting to Master Mason level.. not that impossible, but hardly a case of registering your details on a forum or purchasing a disc. Open Falcon: Strengths - Probably the most realistic of all the freely available mods. Weaknesses - No major updates expected, may not work outside of XP, the most system intensive of all the freely available mods. Free Falcon: Strengths - The prettiest graphically of all the 3 camps, free, loads of user mods, active community, plenty of ongoing developments (patches, new installers etc), and multiple aircraft types included (including backseat cockpits for some) Weaknesses - Not as realistic or hard core in mind as either BMS or Open Falcon, avionics for the other aircraft are all based around the engine that was designed for the F-16 so a bit of a fudge to say the least, if you don't mind F-16 type hud symboligy and radar in an F-4, F-117, F-15 etc then it's not such an issue. Allied Force: Strengths - Allegedly the most stable of the three (although I have both Allied Force and Free Falcon, and honestly can't put a cigarette paper between them both on stability.. more on that below), peace of mind that you have purchased a product that doesn't infringe any copyright issues and so on. Many user mods and an active fanbase. Weaknesses - No major updates forthcoming from the developers at this time (e.g. patches etc) Allied Force hasn't gone for the hard core realism angle of the BMS team either, graphically it is the worst of the lot from stock although much prettier with some after market mods it doesn't quite match Free Falcon or Open Falcon graphically. Now, in general, I think we need to address some common weaknesses that are common to any and all mods or products based on Falcon 4.... which is stability. As mentioned above, despite the claims often made that Allied Force is the most stable of the three, it has not been possible on my end to see much difference in stability between the latest versions of Free Falcon and Allied Force so that is a non argument as far as I'm concerned. What I have seen, with every single Falcon 4 based mod, is that at some point you will inevitably encounter stability issues such as graphics "freezing" while the in game action continues on without you and things of that nature.. annoying yes, frequent even, annoyingly so sometimes.. a deal breaker.. well not really, especially if you haven't paid anything, or not very much in the case of a second hand disc. I found the original Falcon 4 disc in box, with the manual and all the little bits and pieces for £8.. bargain for the manual alone, and if you have the manual, your life will be all the easier when learning the ropes in any flavour of Falcon because none other than the original offer an actual printed manual that you can have open on your lap while following through the training missions. Falcon as anyone who has played it in the past will know, is not a game you play casually, it requires hours of practice, getting to know how to do stuff and why, so yep, if you have any version of the current mods, I would still say you need to either find yourself the original manual or print out the pdf manuals which could run to a lot more than the price of a brand new sim like DCS.. And a final weakness of any flavour of Falcon... the very subject breeds internecine and pointless division.. fans of each flavour can be quick to pounce on any statement they see as unfavourable to their flavour of choice, sniping, bitching and mud slinging is all too common and no one camp can truly say they don't have fanboys like that, my advice.. stay away from the fanboys.. take everything with a pinch of salt, and stay grounded.. it's ok to install and enjoy multiple iterations on their own merits and see for yourself, to that end I'd recommend you try them all if you can. After all, it's not like any other sim on Earth right now, offers everything that Falcon based stuff still does.. DCS is getting there.. but they don't do Vipers.. yet

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!

Spot on video, but you can tell it wasn't made by an actual British Citizen... because of the emphasis on the Crown... I mean what actual Brit gives a flying s**te about the Crown? While that part of the video is technically correct, it's one of those things that not many outside the British Isles actually gets... which is... no one worth a flip, not even the English, actually give one for the Crown... laws are made by rich people for the rich people, everyone works for the poor people to sit on their arses (including unfortunately at the moment, me), but no one really believes they are working for the Queen or the Crown, not even the Royal Marines.. most so called Crown servants and certainly most Crown Citizens give one for the actual people, not some archaic symbol.. although I have doubts about the HMC Revenue staff.. and Ian Paisley

Jean Michel Jarre take note Cool scenes!

Have a good one Jeff!

A big part of the PITA with trojans, viruses and all that stuff, is trying to heal a sick computer, by using that same sick computer.. once your OS is compromised with a Trojan or Virus that locks you out from using things like anti virus or task manager.. don't panic! Just find a friend who has an encloser, or shell out £20 for one.. basically they're plug and play boxes for you to put a hard drive in, and connect it to a PC or laptop via USB cable just like you'd do with an external drive or USB memory stick. So physically remove the sick, infected hard drive from your PC, put it in the enclosure and connect it to another PC or laptop that has antivirus working, when the thing connects and you get the dialogue box asking to check the drive for viruses, voila. At least this has worked for me in the past, and similar issues with unmovable corrupted files which were making it impossible for me to re partition my drive how I wanted.. defrag while in an enclosure worked like a charm.

Awesome! That will keep me occupied for days! Just have to lock my mastercard up in a safe next time I go shopping because I'll have about 600 new CDs I want

Brilliant!!!!!

Stary, even just writing this you've shown that not only you recognise there's a problem, several problems even, but you show you are willing and actively making steps to seek help.. despite the source of the quote, the saying is so true.. "a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step". If your experience of dependence on a substance is anything like mine, you'll be aware that it's not just one thing at the root.. to try to single out one moment, one isolated thing, somehow it isn't that simple, somehow it seems like a cancer.. although it can start in one cell, in reality, by the time a cancer is a problem you can forget that start point because it needs to tackle all those other parts it's creeped into, our relationships with other people, with our selves, with the world. For years I used to relate my depression to my parents messy divorce.. for sure it had a huge impact on me, but by the time I had to confront my illnesses and weaknesses, it really was about as much to do with my self confidence with girls, or my ideological youth clashing with the realities of what my young adult self didn't want to see or understand, the world wasn't as clear cut as I once thought. I've been down the depths myself Stary, I've suffered periodically from background depression that seemed "normal" for months at a time, to complete psychotic breakdowns, utter self loathing depression, utterly hopeless isolated depression... the alcohol I have drunk in excess, and to be fare, still even now use too often as a crutch when things start to scare me... the alcohol came as a secondary problem in a way, a symptom rather than the disease, and before I could bring my substance abuse under control, I had to tackle the other things... for example, I had to make my mistakes with girls, like it sounds you have too, but I had to find some piece of mind which it sounds you have yet to find Stary, and I only wish it comes to you as unexpectedly and magnificently as it came to me. My main substance of abuse over the years was heroin.. smoking it thank God as no matter what, I wasn't going to risk blood poisoning no matter how low I was... stupid in some ways because I have been at many times literally trying to end my life through gorging on vast quantities of heroin, tranquilizers, crack cocaine, amphetamines.. all washed down with copious amounts of alcohol. I don't look forward to old age because I know despite my luck, my organs bare as many scars as my mind. I shake, I find myself at times delirious or emotionally inexplicable. I feel guilty in some ways, that despite all my depravity, despite the horrible people I used to be part of (gangs to say the least), the horrible, unforgivable things I have done, I know i paid a heavy price. At my lowest I was raped in a darkened room for others entertainment and my punishment. I was forced to things I rather not think about to save the life that I was at times trying to end... ironic... just like when I had my neck on the railway track, waiting for the train... I would pull back moments before, and clutch for pittyful life in the gravel like an animal, at my darkest moments I had to be an animal too.. but something told me to survive... another voice punished me for living, for being a coward. In one way I feel sorry that I have come out from my darkness relatively unscathed, strong.. immensely strong if I'm truly honest with myself. I'm guilty I left myself get to that state, I messed up... I could have stopped years before.... but in another way I'm not guilty.... I shouldn't be guilty. I am here to tell you.... no matter what.... no matter what hell you find yourself in, what you find yourself to have done, there is always hope!!!!!!!! So long as there is another moment, another second, another minute, another hour, day, week or month.... Life is digital.... it really does come down to is the next moment going to get worse??? Or is it going to get better???? Sometimes, in all the darkness, all we see is things getting worse... but never be blind to the possibility of better.... You know yourself, it's clear from what you write, you know that you are capable of better, you have known better, you want better.... you can and WILL have better!!!!!!! Trust me on this!!!!! Even when you flip a coin, random chaos yields heads or tails, better, or worse.... but even a run of a thousand and one bad flips still leaves you the hope in that digital chance, better or worse... it could be the big change is round the corner, you just have to keep your hope, keep your life, keep your honesty, keep your ethic and will to find better, to work for it! I'm also guilty in a way, that my big change was in a person... although she might as well have been an Angel or an act of God..... for whatever reason, during one of the darkest chapters of my life, where I was once again trying deliberately to die through negligence, through taking ridiculous quantities of heroin with equally ridiculous quantities of alcohol.... for whatever reason, that angel peered into my life and showed me she cared enough not only to shed tears, but to stay... to give me a chance. Can you believe that I gave up heroin for her? From a promise made into her eyes, from that day on, nearly 4 years ago, I have never so much as touched heroin since?? How can I explain this?? I can't!! She is a miracle, and so is the Love I feel for her and from her. I feel guilty because who am I to deserve such a miracle, such a force for good in my life? Every day I wonder that question, but every day, I try in some way to move forward, to try to do some good even if it is as simple as sharing with others my story, hoping somehow I can let you know that sometimes, a miracle can be around the corner when you don't expect, and when you don't want even! I tried hard not to let her in actually! The point is, life can throw you a curve ball with massive repercussions... negative like a family breakdown, or positive like a stranger who gives a f***.... but in each case, it is so much more than the individual ball.... like my Girl has stressed to me from day one, my recovery is in no way dependant on her, as amazing as her being there is to me, or whatever miracle curve ball comes your way Stary, as I pray it will come for you too! We have to look beyond the individual parts of our life stories, of our problems and our solutions, and realise the problems and the solutions are much like drops of ink dropped into a glass of water... the problem permeates throughout and colours our entire lives, and so must our recovery!!! Take the inspiration that Good can come when you least expect it, that things can and do get better.... but also know we have to take the lead from the Good when it comes, and let our water be coloured once more, let our lives be permeated, transformed... To use one of my favourite quotes from a song and a film.... "we must be powerful, beautiful.... without regret!" Your time will come Stary! Hang on in there, and if you ever need me, you know where I am

Happy Birthday Mannie! Have a great one! And many happy returns of the day

Thanks for sharing! Great find. Reposting on Facebook now

Congrats to Jeff and David on your recent achievements and all the best to Sheila! Girl power for the win!

Congratulations!! Well done and have a well earned rest.