Lt. James Cater

For one thing, England's defensive weaknesses were exposed for all to see. Sheer speed of the opposition left some defenders at a severe disadvantage a few times and the keepers position is the achilles heel of the team. Two of them are way below average for this level of competition and one is skilled, but lacks experience.

The Replacements- Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash

Shades of Andres Escobar! Seriously though, Green blew a schoolyard save and barely kept Altimore from scoring as well. England is doomed once it runs into a real sharp shooting team.

Boy, did i luck out as i was going to lay some bets down on Mexico and Greece but decided not to on Thursday. Damn shame about Ireland. They had every right to be in South Africa but were denied by an evil hand.

We found out one thing with today's games. France is going to have major problems with the top teams. If they couldn't put away a short handed Urugyuan side, can you imagine them against the elite?

The posts killed South Africa on a few shots. Imagine the crowd reaction if that last attempt made it! As it is, a draw vs Mexico is still good. As for the Mexicans? Yet again they fail to win the opener. Some streaks never seem to end.

Just a lil' update. My Thud was shot down by ground fire while strafing an airfield so that campign is done. Started a new one flying Harriers but was shot down by friendly fire. Am currently doing a Non-DID campaign so i can try something new and avoid burnout. Will be back in the skies soon! Good luck everyone!

http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/06/01/win-a-soccer-game-by-more-than-five-points-and-you-lose-ottawa-league-says/ You gotta be kidding! When i played little league baseball my team only won a single game during one season. Sorry, but it wasn't the end of the world for us kids back then.

When i was a kid, i was a rather bad loser. I HATED to lose! I would shake the other teams' hands and all but i was volcanically fuming inside. Couldn't say much anyway because we got beaten fair and square. What i hated even worse was to be embarrassed by someone flaunting their superiority. If i ever encountered someone doing something similar to what is demanded by the "New Rules" i would do my utter best to find a way to physically maul them. Couldn't care less about rules, penalties, the coach, being thrown out the game, etc. It was a matter of saving face. I guarantee you that sooner or later, some kid on a losing side is going to snap from the humiliation and just unload on an opponent.

Not sure about all these inis and dlls but... Just finished a mission about a half hour ago with a wingman bright enough to shoot down a MIG-25 while flying an A-7! Yesterday, another wingman flying a Harrier bagged two Mig25s out of a flight that jumped us. Sometimes you just get surprised by what the AI can do.

I've made a series of posts some time ago concerning recce missions using a MIG-25 in the ODS MOD. I can't remember the exact altitude, but it made me feel more like a NASA guy. It's not a blast and zoom profile. It takes a number of plateus to get up to altitude while maintaining high enough speed to avoid enemy fighters. IIRC, the first step was done in a pitch up from full speed from 500 to 25,000ft. Then up in 10,000ft increments until 50,000ft. Past that was rather gradual if you wanted to maintain a speed high enough to be able to outrun any potential threat. The F-14/Phoenix combo is a very potent threat! Guess i'll fire up the comp and just to experience it again.

Omaha beach... A whole bunch of men at the wrong places, at the wrong time, with the worst possible odds, at horrendous cost manage to overcome the enemy and make a firm lodgement on French soil.

I've run across so may scenarios like that it isn't even funny. On a daily basis i read of stuff like that and the Expats have warned about the very same thing. So that give one five options... 1-Live with the consequences-To be brutally frank, i think little of the UK cops due to the restrictions imposed on them and i absolutly laugh at the prison system. What are they going to do, put you in the SHU at Pelican Bay or lock you down at ADX Florence? UK prisons are known to be a walk in the park. 2-Make the perp do a Houdini-For whatever reasons, corpse disposal is a known skill at certain levels. It's not as hard as one thinks. 3-Live like a bitch-If you have no heart you might as well commit suicide as you are nothing but prey. 4-Be inside the terror-Not exactly being out there with the wolves, but find a way to end up on their side so they don't target you. 5-Alpha Male-Be such a bad ass all around motherf***er that no one will think twice about causing you harm. Where there's a will, there's a way. Like it or not, that's reality for a whole lot of people. Damn shame that it comes down to that.

A gauge isn't the answer for every situation. If i was in the UK and caught some dumb ass kid or a crack head breaking in i would probaly just hit em real hard once or twice with a bat and call it a wrap. Additionally, i'd inform them that if i did catch them a second time i would simply kill them, cut them up, and plant them somewhere. Here in the US though i would feel obliged to smoke them to set an example for anyone else who might have any idea of coming into my place. If you know you are going to get away with it, feel free to blast away.

The "i have a right" thing i've actually seen in a way when people on forums post videos. I once saw a vid of a guy screaming and spitting in a UK cops' face. Needless to say, the repercussions of such an act here can be especially severe in certain cities but the guy in the video got off with nothing but a verbal warning. And that after he tore apart the yard and garden of a neighbor! I was standing near a cop giving a lady a traffic ticket about three years ago and some yahoo walked behind the cop and said "F***ing Pig" in a noticible voice. Well, the cop whipped an arm around, grabbed the guy by the neck and slammed him face first into the boot of the cruiser. He then proceeded to slam the guys face about half dozen times more then stood him up and searched his pockets for weapons or ID. About every 10 seconds during the search, he would yank and the boot steadily got dented. Finally he told the guy to wise up and watch his mouth, slammed him two final times and let him go. The Mexican lady who was getting the ticket was watching it all through her rear view mirror and didn't even flinch. Those of us standing around watching got a good laugh. One fool amongst us wanted to get the cops number but we told him to mind his own business or get stomped for being a rat. There are certain lines that you have to respect and the idiot who got pounded obviously was out of bounds.

Migbuster says it best IMO. However, certain places of Western Europe i consider a criminals' paradise. Naturally i check out the UK more than any other place due to wanting to move there and i consider the country a nation of prey. True, here in the US we have those high gun deaths year after year but the street crime rate in the UK leaves the US in the dust. I've communicated with a lot of people from over there and they usually are dumbfounded by the low levels of stuff like robberies and assaults in areas that are hard core gang territories. One place i was at a few years ago had 18th Street claiming the apartment complex i lived in as well as some adjacent blocks going for about a half mile. Right around the corner was a Crip set and further down from them was Blood territory. Shootings happened on a frequent basis but unless you were in the "Game" life was just fine. I could go outside half drunk at 1 in the morning and didn't even have the threat of being stepped to. Why? In that neighborhood, the chances of getting shot trying to rob someone was pretty good as it was an armed camp. Hell, even i had a pistol and would take it with me sometimes just because. I didn't even have a licence to carry it concealed but no one cared. Even the Police would overlook you packing it if you had a realitively clean record. Of course they would tell you not to make it a habit. Another place i lived in was in something else. I NEVER knew of a single incident of some civilian being jacked in the 7 block area that made up the hood despite it being seriously scary after dark. It was gangbangers wall to wall in that area too. Some of them known killers. I'm not even going to bring the Police into this. Just let it be stated that they patrolled frequently, knew the turf intimatly, and were renowned for the agressiveness of the officers. But one could walk to the streets at night without much of a threat. Can say the same of, Liverpool, Manchester, or Glasgow? I publicly admit to everyone that i did my fair share of dirty when i was a youngster. I stole everything from candy to cars. I could not walk into a store without thinking of theft. Boosting was my thing! Even when i was at Basic and OCS i was stealing, but this time it was for my platoon. The Drill Sergents took full advantage of my "Midnight Requesition" skills to keep us well supplied. But mugging on the streets was a no no. The chance of someone finishing you off rather than Police catching you was just too much of a risk. I guarantee you this. In the UK, my boys and i would not have had any real deterrent in escalating our activities to more serious levels. But damn is the UK crawling with thugs that i never even fanthomed. There is a growing UK expat community here in southern Nevada and boy do they have stories to tell. Between their recollections and checking out the UK media on a daily basis as well as certain forums where i lurk, one gets the impression that going out after sunset over there seems to be a mission as the bad guys have every possible advantage over a straight citizen. Can anyone from over there give a reason why? And why aren't citizens allowed to defend themselves and their property in a proper manner.

Question...How The hell does one rack up a "score" like that without the police getting info and reacting? With a shotgun, it's a pretty hard task to rack up like that. Granted, i'm posting this with experience in mind of the (in)famously serious turnouts of the five(Yes, 5)Police forces in my area. 5-0 here have damn near done double backflips in going after a shooter like that.

Not to thread hijack but... A really sick observation went around some time ago that virtually all those mass school shooting were done in suburbia. In the inner city schools, a good percentage of the students were already armed and would have fired back at an attacker. An observation of mine is that in the slums where i lived, a mass shooter wouldn't have made it 50 yards without drawing a storm of return fire. I'm not exagerating in saying that EVERY house on both sides of my street for two blocks in either direction had some sort of weapon. I mean, from assault rifles right down to crossbows!

At least you can give credit to the Ump for publicly admitting he blew the call. In this day and age, that's really saying something. As for Griffey? For a long time he WAS Seattle. You couldn't help but mention his name in the same breath as the team. If only he could have avoided certain nagging injuries, he might have put up some truly mind boggling numbers. As it is, he is a hands down Hall Of Famer.

Dude, trust me on this one. You don't need eye candy for ODS as it is one of THE most intense campaigns for these sims. About the only similar level of difficulty and danger i have ever found is the almighty terrifying flak in the WOV Gold mod. After a few missions, you aren't concentrating so hard on how "neat" something looks because you are going to be distracted by everything the mission requires to get it done and get home in one peice.

If someone wants to get their hands on a gun, it's pretty much a forgone deal no matter where you are.

I would have to question this also. In a campaign flying F-15s, my favorite wingman got 30+ kills. Usually i gave him his first target or two but he was quite successful in some wild dogfights on his own.

Cynic-Focus

http://forum.combatace.com/gallery/image/12523-clipboard-b10jpg/ 6NOV62 Will just give a bare bones report and will fill it out later as i misplaced my mission notes. Had a CAS mission not to far away from our base. A flight of us set out and got there EXACTly at the same time that the Reds were. We dropped our ordnance then set out at high speed for home. A pair of MIG-17s were right on us and when it became apparent that were going to stay around for a while, i turned back and called for everyone to go A2A. when it seemed the enemy were on to me, i sent everyone home and decided to give the MIGs a hard time. Eventually, i got them both. The first was a real Honcho and we made multiple head on passes at each other. I finally got him with a burst at such a close range that my aircraft was damaged from his plane exploding by as he passed by. The second tried to be slick once to often. It was obvious that he was trying to break for home but i had the fuel and speed advantage. He got really predictable and that spelt his doom. He had a trick until waiting until i roared into shooting range and then pull hard and stand on his tail. It was a neat trick but i refused the bait and kept on going until i could set up for another approach. The third time, i anticipated the manuver and as he began to climb, i pulled up brutally and nailed the MIG. Going home was easy enough as i got them within 15 miles of the base. You CAN get kills with a Thud provided you fight to it's strengths and avoid the MIG's prefered style.