GwynO

Thanks for the advice and kind words guys, I think my feet are back down to earth now. It might not have been all that wise to take the job in any case as I am planning to move to Greece in only a matter of months where my partner is busy making arrangements with our first non rented place together. I only applied out of curiosity but for £100,000 a year, if there's one thing about Stam, it's that she's pragmatic and would probably have encouraged me to make a go of it and maybe she could come back and do some study in the meantime. As it is, I have a perfectly reasonable, if not as well paid, career lined up in Greece. Not having a driving license, especially as a male nearing 28 years old is very much a rarity in the UK too. I'm sure many employers might read into my situation as tentative evidence of insanity or some serious criminal convictions, but the reality is that I have never had the money, or the need for a car. Living in cities for the last 8 years I have managed just fine with public transport, but it would be so convenient to get a car. The license doesn't cost so much, it's maintaining the things in terms of fuel, tax, insurance and so on that's the real problem, that and the fact that all these years of not driving has actually made me a bit apprehensive of getting behind the wheel! Thanks for the heads up on the crash course Mike! Hopefully I won't crash but knowing me I will get shunted at junctions from sitting there wondering if it's safe to pull out. £600 would be steep at the minute still as I am eating away into savings doing this whole job search for the sake of a few months left in the UK, it's a catch 22, eat the money now to improve chances of work, by which time it is time to leave and I won't be able to as I'll be broke, or.. well I don't know what the answer is, but times like this I rely on the old dictum: "I have a plan, I don't know what is yet, but it's definitely a plan!" If all else fails, I will take the dark side as you jokingly suggested Matt, if I cross dress, blackface, affect a limp, a lisp and a predilection for humus, just maybe I might get a dream job It's not as bad as that, but still, too many times a company will promote a token minority just so they can say "hey look, we don't discriminate" regardless of the candidate's merit. Anyway, I digress, the point is if they even considered giving me, a welsh sheep shagging badger *****r (according to a cough reminiscent of badger transmitted TB, apparently) a £35,000 a year job, well it can't all be bad Thanks guys

If anyone in the Plymouth area is looking to rent or knows someone looking to rent, pm me. £240 PCM all in (rates etc.) It's a good house, empty apart from me at present and the landlord's getting fussy, I'm pretty sure he'd go lower just to get the rooms filled. Of course, anyone in the Plymouth area is welcome to come over for a drink, cup of tea, gaming any time And if you're ever visiting from the States, might be worth going to see the Mayflower steps, some dudes left from here 290 years ago this September, I wonder what became of them

Nice one! You're always welcome Widowmaker, it's always been one my ambitions to be able to respond to "Ah yeh gannin oot an the tap leek?" with a hearty "way aye man!" Although I have been told on good authority my Geordie accent is terrible.

Ever picked your ears and smelled your finger? I bet that guy did

She's wants you Yuri, and you want her too!

Bert must be stopped, it's only a matter of time before he gets the bomb http://www.bertisevi...ges/bert030.htm Maybe this deadly secret agent could help, she would literally be quite untouchable in Bert's current location. This site has loads of hilarious cartoons on the whole issue, these really crack me up Others really hit the nail on the head, like these..

One life time subscription to western evil freedom claimed! It wouldn't surprise me if FB pulled the plug on the page though. One of my friends has been using Voltaire's timeless sentiment "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it!" as her msn sig for a while now and I love it, it's just what she's like as well, we can argue about politics, religion, sex, economics and all sorts of subjects to a crazy level but we always respect each others views. With the Bert from Sesame extremists it seems like the total opposite like "I disagree with what you say and will fight your right to say it till death"

Every time you draw a Mohamad, a peaceful extremist blows up.

Can't resist one more.. "So all this time you've had me rounding up sheep.. it was for THIS!! Dude you better hope the FBI don't get this HD"

There's no use denying it, I've gone through your chat logs.. it's over

I think so! Was one of the program executables a copy of the default Vietnam exe renamed something like SF-2VXP.exe? That's what I do, so I have the default exe for each game, and a copy renamed for each major mod conversion. When the updater scans your Strike fighters folder, it only updates the default executables, so after it's done that, let your mouse hover over the program icon and you will notice the version number will be one higher for the default copies, but not your modded ones. Simple solution is to delete all the copies, then make more copies of the newer default programs, rename them to what they used to be e.g. SF-2VXP.exe and you should be back in game! However, I don't know but I'm fairly certain that the updater will overwrite inis in your mod folder if there were any changes to default aircraft, objects and so on in the update, this will happen the first time you load the exe, no matter if you have renamed it.. just to be safe, it is best to comment out your mod folder FIRST like put an x in front of it e.g. SF-2VXPmods to xSF-2VXPmods , then load up your freshly renamed exe, play an instant mission, exit, go to Strike Fighters folder and you will see that the game has just made a new SF-2VXPmods folder with all the updates applied. Next you can just move all files from your xSF-2VXPmods folder to the SF-2VXPmods and you will be good to go. However, a simple overwrite from the old to new means that you could be overwriting the fixes put in for some of the planes e.g. decal placement and things like that , but keeping the updated inis as default might mean you loose some of the changes meant for the mod, the only way to get the best of both worlds is to role up the sleeves and copy all the modified data from your old on into the newer files line by line so that you only add what needs to be there for the mod while keeping the rest stock. If that sounds time consuming, believe me it is! I gave up on that a while back and now just do the lazy method of replacing new with old. Hope that helps. G.

Combat Ace is the friendliest, most informative and best place on the internet for sims bar none. I haven't seen a site like this ever, all game oriented communities could learn from you guys.

So.. another bomb goes off in Iraq, in a stadium this time. Most people it seems either ignore these stories now because they are so routine, or else read them but don't use any modicum of common sense to understand what is happening, to who, and why. This bombing, like almost all large acts of violence in Iraq has nothing to do with oil, or the occupation. This bomb targeted a Shia neighbourhood.. ring any bells? If you haven't noticed, yet then start noticing! It's almost always the Shia that are the targets just as they were under Saddam, because nothing has changed in that regard. So who are the Shia you might ask? Well to cut a very long and boring story short, you could think of the Shia as being Catholic if they were Christian, they have a figure somewhat like a pope whereas the other major grouping are called Sunni, although there is nothing Sunny in their disposition, they could be seen as the protestant in this analogy as they generally don't have a pope like figure, however the analogy isn't what's important, what's important is that in Iraq's 80 something year history as a set of straight lines on a map, the Sunny Arabs have constituted roughly 20% of the country... they are the minority, albeit some a ruthless, vicious and loud minority. So if the Sunny Arabs are no more than 20% of Iraq, who are the rest? Well, the rest are a mix of all sorts, Kurds, Turkmen, Assyrian, Roma, Jewish, Christian and many many more smaller ethnic and religious groups, all of who have been persecuted to varying degree throughout Iraq's sordid 85 year history by the same community, time after time, the Sunni minority have sought to keep their dominance over the whole country through outrageous acts of violence against any and all non Sunni groups. It won't surprise anyone to note that the blame for this is usually put onto the British, because the lines on the map were drawn by the British, and they supported a Sunni leadership in the country, but you would be incredibly naive to make an assumption that this was an example of British meddling making a bad situation in the world because this atrocious situation for the non Sunni had already been going on for three hundred years before the British set eyes on the place as the Turkish Ottoman empire (Sunni) has established this status quo and the British Empire of the time simply kept the same groupings in power. It won't surprise anyone to note that Saddam was Sunni, and we all know what he did to Shia, and Kurds, and anyone who stood in his way. Likewise it won't come as a surprise that Al Qaeda are Sunni, or that the most violent and cowardly of all the various insurgent groups are invariably Sunni. What might surprise you, is the cockheaded way in which we, the Western world have gone about trying to sort out the current situation. You would think, given our pride in democracy and being fair to the masses, that we would eschew the history of minority rule through fear and violence in Iraq and support the Shia. You would think that a rather bloody simple if not politically correct way to bring stability to the country would be to arm the hell out of groups like the Mehdi Army (Shia) and allow them to "defend" their community in as ruthless a manner as it takes for Sunni groups to realise that their reign over 80% of the country by force is over. But no. We don't. We stand by, all of us who aren't even fighting, we stand by and don't even take the time to learn what is happening where, why and to who, so we aren't even qualified to make a suggestion to our politicians about it. So I implore you, good people, please! Take a good look at the news reports and count yourself, how many of the suicide bombs go off in Shia neighbourhoods, how many suicide bombs target Shia markets. How many suicide bombs target Shia mosques. How many bombs target Shia funerals? Finally, to all of you who think that all this is the fault of Western forces destabilising the country, it may be true that during Saddam's time the Shia were not in the news because they had been suicide bombed, they weren't, but neither were they in the news for being kidnapped and thrown into his special prisons, or summarily executed by his henchmen. There is nothing smart about a suicide bomb, the West did not make this mess, but we can help to reduce it, the choices just aren't politically correct enough nor are the politicians brave enough to stand up for what is right. (Edited to remove unnecessary swearing)

I'm sorry if I'm ranting, I'm sorry if I upset anyone by that post, but it's been simmering in me for years and I didn't say anything because I could see it being censored or removed straight away. I guess I just don't care any more, the decision is not mine to make. If you disagree with me fine by all accounts, if you don't wish to see my words on a screen then do away with them, if you hate then so be it, but I'm sick of holding my tongue. I am lucky so far that none of my friends have been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, but every day I hear some news about the stuff that's happening in both places, I feel ice cold inside knowing they could caught up in that and none of it is any of their fault.

"Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said there had been no option but to kill the "terrorists". "Those who put up resistance have to be eliminated - you cannot show pity," the Russian leader was reported as saying at a meeting with Mr Bortnikov." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8680074.stm Russia fulfils their promise to find and destroy those responsible for the terrorist attack on the Moscow Metro. Yeeeeeeessssss!!!! Now that's a successful and unashamed outcome! hard to imagine the lilly livered politicians in this country even suggesting such a thing in the first place yet alone following through, more likely we would have had them on trial and found them innocent on a technicality then paid them compensation to last them till their international book deal, lecture tour and film rights give them a world wide audience of gullible idiots feeling sorry for the poor innocent victims of false arrest. Not that the Brits released from Gitmo did just that, I mean they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, with weapons cashes and a history of finacial and travel links to terrorism, not suspicious at all.

I've been playing this sim off and on for since late last year with the TMO and RFB mods installed it is a truely amazing experience, so much so I even have dreams reliving the virtual action! But one thing that would make it even better for me would be the chance to play as a Brit, in a British submarine. Any chance of this, does anyone know of a British sub mod for the series? If so, would that be compatible with TMO and RFB. Also, I noticed that the Holy Loch is an option for the campaign, but have yet to find any shipping in the Atlantic or around the Bay of Bisque, and I am always assigned a patrol somewhere in the Pacific despite starting out from Glasgow.

Nice one! On trawling their threads, it appears that it is in the pipeline. http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=138610 Two weeks maybe

No more third world child? We still get a bucket of jellied Eels though, don't we?

Half way through downloading the installer again, a thought struck me.. what if the installer was trying to locate SFI in Program Files, where it has never been in the first place, Once again, my stupidity surpasses all expectations! So if anyone else is so excited they miss a step, take a breath, relax and try again.

I wish I could try downloading the installer again, but with 4gb data allowance to spread until the 6th of June, I think I will have to wait till later for this one. I have all of the SF2 titles, I just played SF2I now and it works. Oh well.

Has anyone managed to get it to install yet? I keep getting the error message "Strike Fighters 2 Expansion Pack 1 was not found in the specified directory. Please locate the correct installation fodler using the Browse button." No sense downloading it again if it's a widespread issue, especially as mobile broadband has a nasty habit of running out of data allowance and charging me a fortune. I might just hold on till the second or third patch before the next DL.

Nice!! I wonder if this mean the F-14 game will be the Xmas release?

It's absurd, I wish they would do an U.K. version! Though it's unlikely due to concerns about negative representation of the gay community or whatever, but those people volunteered to do the program. I'm sure many people would see it for what it is, a non representative (one should bloody well hope) slice of the gay community acting up for the camera. The screamer with a rifle is hilarious! Although, I know of at least one apparently straight guy who would be exactly the same! He's a teacher very much in the beard, long hair and glasses vein of 1970s OU programs, brown suits and all. He's got a gorgeous girlfriend but his reaction to descriptions of any kind of violence is more or less that. Whereas some poofs are well hard.

It's a bit silly to say the least! Whatever next, a gay Navy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3icDB3kRKPg Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear.

Delta winged aircraft bleed speed in high speed turns according to all accounts I have read in books, magazines and on here. In a high angle of attack state, a delta wing is essentially a gigantic air break, hence why the mirages have always been high speed, mostly straight line, bombers or interceptors and never pure fighters.