JediMaster

Those guys aren't being forced to fly roundtrip combat sorties from CONUS, are they? They're staging out of somewhere closer? That would be some punishing flights.

Yeah, "MS Flight"...but look, we dropped the word simulator!! It's easy now!! Buy it!!

I haven't had a chance to try it yet. I take it you don't have either heavy bomber either, like me? I would guess the key would work the same for those.

Did you see Caprica's finale on DVD? I saw it live, but I know someone who got it on DVD and watched it before the airing. On the air, the final shot just said something like "Caprica" with that shot of the planet from space. On the DVD, it said something like "Caprica - coming in season 2". I guess the other words were wiped off before it aired, but that was no more than a teaser for season 2. I guess that was back when they hoped the decision to cancel or renew wouldn't be made until after it aired, but SFC's lame decision to push the 2nd half so far back that the actors' contracts were going to expire before it aired screwed that up. As for The Plan, yeah, I was a bit let down by that. Razor certainly took the award for best 2 hr movie they did, although the miniseries was better.

I've never done any online racing except on PC. Oh wait, did Mag and I once do a Forza 2 race about 2.5 yrs ago? Maybe.

The most I do is pizza and a soda. I don't have a stomach that likes greasy food, that stopped around the time I hit 30. A "great" meal isn't worth hours of pain and an hour in the can.

LOL, these things tend to get more discussion in the Pub then down here, actually. However, I will admit there's not much traffic about this stuff there overall either.

Congrats, I'm just 4 weeks behind you for my second girl!

Croatia's MiG-21s aren't the modern updated ones countries like Romania have. They COULD upgrade them, but they'd still have the same limitations on range and payload. Plus the list of RH missiles a 21 can carry is VERY short and doesn't include AMRAAMs.

However it started, there is no doubt that there are former and current military involved on what is blatantly called "the rebel side". This is most certainly a civil war, but the two sides are hardly balanced. The main difference is civilians not in the rebels' territory being killed. Sort of like if Sherman had burned Philadelphia because several thousand people there were sympathetic to the South.

I'll never understand why they bother. They have to know this won't accomplish anything significant. How many countries have ever been defeated by having a few dozen civilians killed? How about ZERO? They have no ideas on how to create anything, just destroy on a small scale, so they're going to do it for, well, ever I guess. Since they won't give up and they have to know they'll never accomplish what they say they will...

It sure beats the alternative of NOT having another one...

If Saddam Hussein had gone on the talk show circuit proclaiming the benefits of a diet higher in fish and vegetables with less red meat, it wouldn't have made him any more appealing. Just because you're capable of making sense doesn't mean you're someone people should listen to if the times when you do NOT make sense are so miserable.

Tough crowd? I have seen some other games that do the mandatory update thing, although usually it's because of MP reasons ie Sins of a Solar Empire you can leave at whatever patch level you like UNLESS you go online to play in which case it forces you to update or won't let you connect. Many RTS games are heavily MP-based now so perhaps that's what they've done here except it's at the start instead of waiting for you to go online. Oh, the aforementioned CoH will force an update as soon as you start the game I just remembered.

The USSR wouldn't have picked a foreign design for their trainers if it wasn't. However, I know the newer Czech designs haven't enjoyed a lot of export success compared to the old 39s, and to many countries the chicken vs egg situation is very important. "We'd like to buy it, but we see no one else has, and we aren't going to risk being the only ones other than you..." That happened to the F-20 Tigershark 25 years ago.

The difference is with communism you only have to approve it once and then you're stuck with it no matter how much you might hate it. Steam users can easily give it up, no one forces you to buy games there or keep using it! Bieber fans...um...they're not even going to understand what communism is, so I say just put the padded helmets on them so they don't hurt themselves and walk away. Of the 2 incidents I mentioned, one was an update pushed to Arma 2 just before I was ready to play MP one night with a group. I was stuck as the DL took a good 90 mins and once it starts it zeros-out the files it's replacing so you can't even cancel and play with the old version, once it starts you have to let it finish. I did know the patch was out, but I thought Steam was going to take longer to put it out there so I'd already patched it myself (the arma2 patches let you do that)...but I forgot to turn off auto update. I have never seen a game that pushed a patch anyway even though Steam's settings said do not update. Of course, I've never owned any of the Total War series, in Steam or otherwise, so I've no idea how it works. Generally speaking, Steam is best when the game itself has none of that stuff--no auto-updating, no DRM, no fuss. I know Company of Heroes on Steam is a bit of a pain because CoH has its own auto-updater built in, but since Steam does it for it instead there's a bit of a tug of war there.

The T-50 is probably the best, but I think it's also the most expensive. It's an F-16-lite. As such, I can't really say if it's the best fit for Poland's needs or not. I believe they have 2-seat F-16s anyway, so a trainer that is almost the same seems a bit redundant. However, if it's even easier to fly it might be the best idea. The Hawk has been around for a long time and has long since proven itself. It's certainly a safe bet. I suppose they could pick the M-346 or L-159, but I don't feel it. There's also the political angle to this. The only one with any US involvement is the T-50, the others are all Euro designs.

Seeing as there's no obvious flak or missile trail, the possibility that this was a poorly-maintained plane's engine exploding can not be discounted. Even planes in good shape have it happen (search for the F-14 supersonic flyby that had an engine let go).

If he's going to Iraq there's a good chance he won't be fighting anything. It's not 5 years ago. If he was going to Afghanistan, that would be something entirely different. Remember when we used to laugh at the Soviet Union for being stuck there for over 8 years? Sigh...

The only days that mean anything are things like equinoxes because they represent something actually happening on a regular schedule that we had no involvement with. Something like New Years on Y2K was a complete nothing.

I don't think it matters when there are cellphones or passengers they MUST converse with involved. Or drugs or alcohol.

As all the F-14s have been rendered unflyable or scrapped, we will not see them fight again.

I have close to 100 games on Steam and I've only had 2 incidents of trouble with it in almost 7 years of use. Can't say I have that success rate with any other form of DRM, disc checking, or what-have-you. Just remember, while YOU may have had issues with it, not all those other millions of people using it are or else it wouldn't have that many millions of users.

The most dangerous weapon in the US is the automobile. Unfortunately, the licensing program is wholly inadequate to weed out the offenders.

There's also over 6 BILLION people now living in the same size space, so a natural disaster will of course affect that many more people. Of course, whoever originally came up with the idea that increased numbers of wars, natural disasters, plagues, etc was a sign of the end times deserves to have someone invent a time machine, go back, and kill them before they opened their mouth. To take a bunch of unconnected events and then declare that "that will be the sign" took no talent, just someone looking to make themselves more important by instilling fear in the masses.