joltan

Hehe, yeah! It's not as if I really did have a choice...

Nice! This great demo mission with it's unforgotten cliffhanger ending was what originally convinced me to go out buy the game imediately after completing it.

He, it's much better walking up there anyways - as long as you don't arrive just at closing time (as it happened to us). Had to walk up again the next morning... At least we got some exercise! I can really recommend Rhodes - as long as you're not there during high season and as long as you avoid all towns inbetween Rhodes City and Lindos like the plague (go to Mallorca or the Costa del Sol if you like THAT kind of vacacions). There's some very nice monasteries in the interior of the island - and the west coast is quite nice (and less crowded), too. The best way to enjoy the island: spend 1-2 night in a nice pension in the old town, then rent a car and tour around the island, spending the nights in whatever village you end up at the end of the day. Oh, and while it's not really famous for it's diving grounds there's some good diving schools in Rhodes City where you can get your scuba fix when needed.

Ah, I understood SP2 to be a critical security update (no, not the fancy firewall stuff - but most of the small patches also included). This isn't primarly a patch for more features, it's a security update that was long overdue - not installing it is plain stupid (as long as your most important software is still working).

The point is that I just can't see how they could avoid it. Of course it would be great if they could capture Sadr alive and if they wouldn't need to storm the mosque but were able to get them to surrender or leave. But that's unrealistic - and if they want to bring peace to the country they have to crush the militants - especially those that operate as open and prudent as al-Sadr. How it works out when you leave militas armed that oppose the central government can be seen in Afghanistan where the Warlords fight amongst each other and against the central government. That's no way to bring a country to peace. The only way a modern nation can work peacfully is when the central government is the only power authorized to use force. And the militants pose a danger to that.

I think neither the US nor the Iraqui government can tolerate these militants, so sooner or later they HAVE to storm the mosque (as long as Al-Sadr and his followers don't leave it before - which I doubt very much). This will cause strong emotions among muslims and will be used as a propaganda tool by Qaida and other radical islamists. So far the situation is inevitable and it might be better to get over it quickly. What's still open is how the US and the Iraqui government follow up to the situation? They could put a lot of effort in blunting the propaganda value by making it as clear as possible that the shrine itself was never the target, and that they'll do ANYTHING to repair the dammages as quickly as possible. Possible including big donations to the shrine & money for high quality restauration works. Oh, and to let locals do the work (and earn the money) - and not Haliburton...

1. The Lucas Arts adventures (I.e. Monkey Island series & DoT) 2. Operation Flashpoint 3. Baldurs Gate (1 & 2) 4. The Settlers (all parts) 5. Command & Conquer: Red Alert 6. Ultima VI 7. Doom 8. IL2 FB 9. Dune 2 (later rereleased as Dune 2000) 10. Infocom's 'Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy' Right, some VERY old ones on this list - but I've yet to encounter other games I have such fond memories of as the ones listed above.

I think Fallout (1 & 2) were great, but Baldurs Gate beats them with ease. Might be a matter of taste - while I liked the post-apocalyptic setting of Fallout the BG setting felt a bit more complete. Not sure why that is. Anyways, what BG had was a big story that spanned well across both parts & the expansions. With Fallout the stories were much less connected.

I must admit I was wondering about all the comments about the french tourists - I thought those prejudices existed only for german tourists...

I guess that 'Day of the Tenticle' is a spelling error and actually should read 'Day of the Tentacle' which is one of the best adventures EVER (one of the old 2d comic-style Lucas Arts adventures).

Some programms won't work with SP2 anymore - mostly because of stricter security settings. I'd check wether there's a new version of CPU Idle available.

I had the release candidates running before on my german WinXP Pro and just installed the final release over the RC2 - haven't encountered one problem yet. OFP client works fine (played a few hours mp this afternoon). No idea about servers, tho.

Here's the feature list - mainly improved security (bugfixes and new features) inkl. a better build-in firewall. Edit: found another description - its also from M$ (so take it with a pack of salt) - but if someone has a link to an english language article by a third party that'd be nice!

Just had the chance to try these for the first time last night on a french mp server and I have to say these are VERY, VERY nice units, indeed! High quality addons!

Jepp, that's a very good one.

Oh, forgot another VERY good one: Path of Glory (by Stanley Kubrik) - beats FMJ by lengths! Guess I have to edit my post above.

You don't need the president for law-enforcement agencies to take action against criminals, and: the president has a vice-president, who can legally give orders in his name if the president is unable to do so himself. There's nothing about treason or 'ursurping the chain of command'. It's all about fail-safes to keep the government working whatever happens. Wether bush froze for 11 minutes (or longer) doesn't matter, whatever you try to make of it. He was never in danger, he would not have been able to change a thing (due to other problems in the chain of command that made Cheney's 'shoot down' order take too long to reach the pilots). You make Bush the main problem, only he isn't. It's his whole administration (of course including himself).

Definitely 'All quiet on the Western Front'. Old b/w classic from 1930 but unsurpassed (the original book by Erich Maria Remarque is also very good), and followed closely by 'Das Boot' (by Wolfgang Petersen) and 'Path of Glory' (by Stanley Kubrick). All three focus more on the people than the war action - without all the patriotic bullshit most modern war movies (incl. 'Saving Private Ryan', etc.) suffer from. Which is exactly what makes them so good.

I think what people always forget (and parties 'forget' to emphasize on) is that this isn't about the election of one person, but about the election of a whole new administration, where it actually doesn't matter wether the president himself is good at his job - as long as the rest of the administration is. Unfortunately with the Bush administration BOTH the president AND the rest of the administration failed. The latter failiure being the worse. It doesn't matter wether Bush is prone to 'combat freeze' or not. He doesn't have to make split-second descisions. Keeping on nagging about that blinds people to the real shortcomings of this administration.

I just started playing this great game recently and thus am a bit curious if there are any other forum members playing EVE Online? It's very similar to the old Elite/Frontier games (if you don't know these you probably weren't born at the time) - just with great graphics, a completely player driven economy and between 4k - 10k players online around the clock. I imediately fell for it!

Walker, while I don't nescessarily disagree with Kerry being the better choice you're blind devotion is rather contraproductive. This kind of propaganda is not even believable for perople who do support him... Tone down a bit, please, before it gets boring & annoying.

It should be mentioned that it isn't forbidden to sell these games in Germany - just that if they are 'banned' the shops have to sell them (legally) under the counter without advertising them. Also you must be over 18 years to buy them. The BPJS also rates the games - and there's also a cathegory of '18+ years' that may still be advertised but not sold to minors. I think it's an ok system - not perfect, but better than having advertisement for the newest splatter game on all magazine titles. Gaming companies produce special 'German versions' so they still can advertise them and thus sell more copies.

Mhhh... what's up, no server? Pity. Might have been the last time for weeks or even months that I could participate. Anyways, I hope the forum nights don't die out. It was really fun playing with you guys!

Would this also bring up an error if other files in the the pbo were changed but the checked file still resembled the original? Edit: I think this is a great idea, and even if it might not be possible to check the integrity of the whole pbo - at least the actual config used could be verified in a reliable way!

Count me in!