ran

The more nerds signing up there, the more girls and alcohol for us IRL.

the chili con carne was just a "poetic" image used to slightly overdramatize the internal traumas caused by non penetrating hits of large caliber weapons

While the test rounds didn't penetrate, it's quite certain that they'd have inflicted severe internal traumas, the real question is : how would you rather die ? with a hole in yourself, spilling blood on the ground or with chili con carne in place of internal organs and blood flowing everywhere in your body except through your veins ? I'm don't exactly know if I'd wear one. I'm not a ballistic protection specialist but I'd say that a good old well adjusted ceramic plate would distribute the impact power over itself, while the flexibility advertised by Dragon Skin would more likely concentrate the impact power. That said, I don't really know about it and that's just my uninformed opinion and observations. And couldn't a bullet slip under the discs at certain angles ?

New kind of warfare ? Time to read a few books mate, asymetric warfare while it became a buzzword these last few years is far from new and frictions resulting from opposite ideologies are nothing new. Several countries have fought well organised and financed insurgencies: France, South Africa, what was once called Rhodesia, the Brits. Nothing is new, it's just the same stuff rehashed over and over. Irak had a conventionnal -third world- army using mostly outdated or "export" weapon systems bought mainly from the former varsaw pact. Bear in mind that in 1991, it was still affected by the cost of the Iran-Irak war and that in 2003, the Iraki army still beared the pressure of the economic sanctions, not forgetting the purges among its ranks common to all totalitarian regimes. They uparmoured their tanks with concrete and dug their planes under the sand for christ's sake. Overconfidence kills, as much as the enemy, whoever that is.

I'm fine with my two Samsung SGH I300 at the moment, a personnal one and the other for professionnal stuff, some people will scream redundancy but I'm alright with those and I got them pretty cheap too (roughly 200€ each, that was a real steal but they're good to go) and I did a homemade phone holder after painful (for my other phones) past experiences. Investing in those was quite a feat for me considering that I only had a Nokia 3310 and a 3510 for a long time before even considering the purchase of a phone belonging to a more recent generation and that was a Sagem MyX5. I don't really mind mobile phones, but the smartphones I bought simplified my life. Doesn't mean that I use them for everything though, I mean I still have my 3+ year old 64 and 128 mega USB MP3 players and they're quite enough for me and cheap to replace. I don't exactly see the need to be able to see your correspondent's face during a call or watching TV or movies on a tiny screen, or having your whole records collection, that you'll never have the time to listen to entirely before going back to your place, but being able to read excel graphs and use other applications and yet being able to phone and message is great, and I don't need to wander around with a costly palm and a phone.

I see that someone missed a train there.

I'd say either go fully parade or fully operationnal, I wouldn't mix both. IMHO the buttons on the body armor look out of place and the overvall look is not "flamboyant" enough (the colors are though, maybe a bit too much even) for some kind of official tradition guards. And most official guard units would just go with a simple body armor under their uniform as their job when in dress gear is to look good. Ideally, there should be two versions of the same unit, one in full parade dress and the other quick reaction security component with much less fancy stuff. Here's a "fun" little app, normally aimed at the on demand conception of RL prestige/parade uniforms. : http://www.marck.fr/createur/index_ang.htm And offtopic, but here's a small quick job in paint on a uniform template with details that are easily adjustable (pockets, cuffs, rank/name tabs etc). http://img136.imageshack.us/my.php?image=uniformtemplateic6.jpg

A valuable comunity member leaves, others will come. Goodbye and good luck Placebo.

Even if you do, be sure that I can severely kick yours at MS Minesweeper

Ditto what whocares said, the earlier versions of storymod were awesome so I can't wait to give a try to the next take on it. And while people might find the lact of an actual storyline boring, I kind of like it, no romanesque last minute face off or flip flop, just good old butchering of barbarians. I generally play for the Swadians ... they've got the better looking stuff than the vaegir peasant and some of them kind of look like 14th century french knights

What the hell is wrong with israeli pilots ? The german ship, the german helicopter and now the french troops ? What the hell are they trying to do ? Looks like they WANT to get shot at. I commend the grunt sitting behind the Mistral fire control for not having an itchy finger, especially considering some recent past experiences involving planes in another shithole. Shouldn't say that, but no matter what diplomatic shitstorm it would cause, I'd love to see the next winged cow boy of the Heyl HaAvir get his attitude problem settled with a few tungsten balls in his airframe as chill pills. The israelis by acting or letting their boys act like that are loosing a lot of sympathies.

The bodies were still there when I went there rougly 4 years ago. Doesn't actually make me sick, but while bones are just bones, which miss most of the features from which we can differenciate one person from the other, the fact that you see clothes, vague limbs and faces details can make somebody uneasy. While I agree, that the actual trend of Joe Sixpack getting used to guts and generally speaking human remains on his TV screen can pose problems. This might sound dumb but I've always made a mental differenciation between bones and flesh. Bones are featureless, most if not all of our individuality lays in our flesh, our face, our brain, our physical distinctive details (like scars, hair, eye color etc etc etc). Once the flesh is gone, everything is gone and all that remains as Denoir said is an assembly of carbon phosphate. We're reminded of our mortal condition every day, when we age, whenn we hurt ourselves, when we feel pain, when we see others go by. And I too had ideals of human fraternity and so on and so forth but that's IMO giving way too much thought in a stupid teenage prank involving lifeless cold and blunt objects. I can understand opposing points of view but my nature and personnal history tell me to push those aside. I go by the saying live and let live thinking that is there's such a thing as humanity, it will come out from that. (don't know if all that made much sense hehe still slightly hungover from yesterday) My only gripe about the guys (back on the original topic) there is that they took pictures, and not so dignifying ones at that

Been there a couple years ago, prerrt amazing if you ask me. I'd tend to agree with your last point Earl. Let's remain focused, people who don't know what PERSEC and decency are shouldn't really make it to the news, especially for something like that. I don't know if those are in breech with forum rules. This threa has been full of good points and common sense lately, feels nice after having a look the the US and ME politics threads

The border between the someone and the something gets blurry under certain circumstances

You're being a bit rude on the camera and net access points. We're not in the 19th century anymore and it's a pretty nice thing to be able to send e-mails to your familly and bring even more photo souvenirs back for a lower cost and with a certain gain in luggage room. A few bad apples don't mean that you have to throw away the whole basket. The thing that irritates me about this case and a few other publicised ones is the inability of some thick skulls to keep their shit to themselves. Common sense, in the army like ANYWHERE else is in short supply.

BTDT, nothing new there. The only difference back in my time is that we had a bit more self-dignity so as not to show our dicks around and digital photo cameras and the web were far from being widespread. You're being a little too peaceniky there Espectro. Nothing to talk about there really. I don't see why the german media made so big of a fuss from that. Seems like they want to stir trouble up for the guys down there. That's not a news item, just cheap sensationalism.

Takes a little time getting used to them but they're quite nice and I appreciate their ergonomy, we have some of those at works and some machines for particular applications.

What's up with Algeria, Phonix ?

I'd love duking it out against the syrians hmmm.

Just one thing, it's spelt "Czech"

I personnally acknowledge the facts that the Sétif incidents were a well covered up blood bath and that torture saw a relatively widespread use. Nobody is completely white. And @ Trevor, we have our own acquaintances in the middle east. While I don't want of Turkey as part of the European Union, I want to retain the ties we already have with her. What you see there by the way is just a rough way to prevent Turkey from joining IMO.

It has an islamic culture, no matter how hard secularism has been pushed by past leaders, it shares borders with Iran, Iraq and Syria and would be an economical liability to the european union, not forgetting the growth of extremism. Priviledged trade partner but not union member. On a sidenote, we celebrated Trafalgar but not Austerlitz last year and we didn't ask for the historical flags to be replaced by simple colors, it was your PC bunch who did it

There's a slight difference between opinions you can express and distort and historical thruths. I'm all in favour of this law, even if it's just to piss the Turks off and push Turkey a bit farther from the European Union. Their accession isn't a given thing, we don't need them inside and there are actually a lot more cons than pros. "La liberté des uns s'arrÄte lÅ• oů commence celle des autres." I hope it will pass, but odds are relatively small seeing how diplomacy is business these days. Freedom of expression is not a given unlimited right, period. Turks don't have to give us any lesson.

Scary, I love you well, not in the litteral sense, but you get it

There's also OFrP's Crotale NG