Pipski

No, what warrants the cost is the satisfaction of an inbuilt drive to explore, a desire to push back the horizon and the romance of stepping beyond our cosy little niche environment and driving our own development.

You're right, of course, the state of medical provision in the 3rd world is parlous and wrong. Might it be better if instead of doing further research we provided free medical care / training to poor countries? Arguably. Will that ever happen? No. Research has to pay for itself. Helping poor people, sadly, never pays for itself. As far as providing help to these people goes, the big advances will be economic rather than scientific. If a few more people bought free trade coffee instead of Nescafe it'd help a lot of people.

Found the link. Last line says possible proof of success by the end of March. New Scientist story from November

In the current climate it's the 3rd world that's more likely to sanction cloning research than the Western world. Â The word `genetic' today has the same kind of impact on the Western public that the word `atomic' had on people in the 50s (when it was synonymous with Godzilla and other irradiated monsters wandering around in the desert). Â In India, on the other hand, black market GM crops are already feeding people very successfully. EDIT: btw, stem cell cloning might be neatly avoided soon anyway. A recent news article (in New Scientist iirc) described a novel technique for generating what are effectively stem cells from ordinary human tissue. If I can find it I'll link it.

My `Net connection is playing up, so no piccies I's afraid but I'd just like to cast a vote here for York Minster, Guildford Cathedral and, especially, Milan Cathedral - very detailed carvings, even in places that people can neither get to, nor see (because God could see them and therefore they had to be decorated in his honour).

Plus, you'll get to share a house with people who also like OFP (if you pick `em carefully), split the cost of a 2MB connection with them and put everyone's PC on a LAN. Or, if you're really lucky, you'll go to a college that allows student residences to piggyback on their T1. Just make sure you don't spend too much time playing OFP instead of studying (f*** up now and you will regret it for a very long time) and socialising (the friends you make next will be the ones you still know when you're sixty).

"Who here knows who Charles Whitman was? None of you dumbasses knows ..." (that's an illustrative quote btw, no need to take umbrage) Spree killings have happened since time immemorial, certainly since long before the genesis of computer games. They seem more common, and certainly more serious, when access to guns is a possibility (though we have that incident where a guy went postal with a samurai sword recently).

Tom Paulin is a prick as well, I didn't realise he was contracted to the Beeb though. They'd probably be well advised to ditch him too. But I am getting thoroughly sick of the Telegraph crying `anti-Semite' every time anyone criticises Israeli policy (Tom Paulin aside! In this instance they've caught one fair and square!). It doesn't help the issue, it's usually not accurate, it's just a Pavlovian instinct to muddy the waters.

Kilroy is a jerk, he always was a jerk and now he's proved that his brain doesn't work. It's of little relevance that he said what he said in his shitrag newspaper column rather than on the Beeb. Hell, by that argument the BBC could employ Combat18 just so long as they didn't go around burning down shops and beating people up when they were on set. Like Caesar's wife, the BBC must be seen to be above reproach. It's an organization that broadcasts throughout the entire world and is trusted as a source of news by the inhabitants of oppressive and censorious regimes. By not responding to the spewings of Kilroy's diseased mind they would only undermine their credibility throughout not only the UK but the rest of the globe. `If there's one racist working there, why couldn't there be more? And if so, how trustworthy can their programmes be?' As it is, the Beeb has sent a strong message that it will not tolerate the kind of disorganised mental effluent that flows from Kilroy's pen and reinforced its position as a balanced and impartial observer of world events. As for several thousands of Arabs dancing in the streets after 9/11, a lot of that footage was shot in Iraq where one suspects the choice boiled down to `you'd better stomp your feet and light a match, we know where you live m*****f*****'. Not all of it was, by any means, but a lot of the more demonstrative joy was filmed in Baghdad.

What's the best way to get an Su25 to invert, then deinvert in flight? (Obviously in flight, it would look stupid on the ground!) Ultimately I want a flight of Frogfoots to go inverted, enter a dive, roll the right way up again, release weapons and then pull out of the dive. Secondly, where can I find a list of all the switchMove commands? The ComRef doesn't have it and it would be useful to me. Merci beaucoup.

Outstanding! Cheers for link.

The part I can't figure out is why the hell anyone writes a letter to their butler? Why not just ring the bell and tell them? It's much quicker!

Also, my mission involves the player taking command of a PBS2 and driving it over 4km-odd of ocean to reach a fairly small island. In Cadet mode this is fine, because there's a big shiny waypoint visible. In Veteran mode it's a nightmare because even given a compass bearing you only have to deviate by a couple of degrees and you miss the place completely (and it's at night which doesn't help!) and end up driving around in circles getting further and further away from it. Anyone have any bright ideas as to how I might simplify the business of navigating to the island for players in Veteran mode?

Can you imagine the radio comms? "Verily sir, a knave lieth not half a furlong hence!" "Alas, I am undone!" "March ye upon ye bellies, even as unto the serpent!" "Forsooth, engage yon dastardly fellow!" "Get in `horse'."

I think we already know the answer to that mystery of the universe... lolol!

Is that the one that the holidaymaker got the footage of? Big passenger plane brought in to a perfect flat landing in the sea about 150m off the beach? Nice piece of piloting iirc. What a strange thing to say!

Okey dokey, will do. Must've got confused about the difference between the two. I thought `Timeout' was for a delay after execution and `countdown' was for before. Jolly dee!

This should be a piece of cake for someone with a bit of editing experience, but not for me! I have this trigger: Activation: Radio Juliet (Once) (Present) Countdown: Min5 Med5 Max5 Type: None Condition: AAAdead OnActivation: goblackhawk=true; blackhawk sidechat "Roger, support elements inbound" OK, so basically the idea is that having spiked the enemy AAA assets the player can issue radio code Juliet whereupon `goblackhawk' will become true (activating the helo's inbound waypoint) and the blackhawk will send a radio message back saying "Roger etc.". So far, so good, and it all works fine except that there is no delay. AFAIK I've set the countdown so there should be a 5 second delay between sending the radio code and the blackhawk starting to fly in and sending its radio message. As it stands, the message comes back instantly as soon as you press 0,0,0. Can somebody explain where I'm going wrong please? I have this same issue with a number of triggers and it's beginning to bug me! Cheers.

I could. As in, enable GPS and put the co-ordinates of the target in the briefing? I shall do that. Ta!

Well, I'll watch it just so long as it doesn't have tons of CGI in it. I'm sick to death of CGI (excepting LotR and the first Matrix).

iirc there's a small hamlet on the other side of the wood, by the road. There's a BMP lurking somewhere around there but if you can avoid getting spotted by that there's some wheels by the houses that you can pinch. Then just drive like a maniac to your waypoint, running over as many Soviets as you can en route!

However, if you take an historical perspective, since the industrial revolution the jobs that have been automated are those that require the least training and education, the menial jobs. As time goes on the sophistication of machines, and therefore the jobs they can do, increases. The imperative, therefore, is to improve the state of public education in line with technological advances. There are still plenty of jobs out there because each advance also makes new jobs, they just require more knowledge and skill to do. Undereducate your population and they'll find themselves replaced by machines, educate them properly and they become part of the revolution. (Of course by `educate' I also include vocational training, apprenticeship and all the other forms of skill development that 7/10 times are more useful than generic higher education anyway.)

Scripts eh? Hmmm. Well, I suppose I've got to get my hands dirty sometime ...

I'm working on a mission and have d/l'd every tutorial I can get my paws on, scoured the FAQs on this and other sites and checked every forum I can think of but there's one very simple thing I can't find an answer to. The tutorials have hinted that you can put a delay before a command is executed at a waypoint (or whatever) by using ~. I've tried using ~10 ~delay 10 and everything else I can think of but it always returns an error. None of the reference guides I've got include examples of its use or syntax. Can someone put me right?

True (though what does Mid do? I never did quite understand). Trouble is I want to delay different things different times at one waypoint. It would be OK with triggers, as long as I set a new trigger for each action but with a waypoint? Unless I use timeout and then x=true and then make a bunch of triggers with x in the condition field ... but that seems a bit of a faff. I was thinking there might be a better way. Cheers though, nice prompt answer!