howardb

Been a few years since I was on this forum now. I actually came here looking for something like Achtung Spitfire or Flight Commander, in a modern wrapping. Shame no one can be bothered making a game like that today.

Indeed. I'm one of those that didn't like the direction Battlefront went after the highly successful WWII Combat Mission games. I didn't even try the new game in a modern setting. Maybe because I read some unfavourable reviews and the fact that a modern setting doesn't really interest me that much. It's got to be one hell of a modern day strategy/tactics game to pique my interest. The General Forum has nothing of interest anymore either so abandonment was certain. Anyway and as I understand it BfN is now developed on a tried and tested engine. I'm very much looking forward to the release. Hopefully I will get some of that "old feeling" back when my panzers roll into hull-down in hunt mode. If only there's enough progression while keeping the brilliant that was Combat Mission this will be the strategy game we've been waiting for since.. well Combat Mission. One support question though: I've started buying all my stuff online and preferably as direct downloads. I've read somewhere that if you buy games as direct download on battlefront.com you will only get to download it once? Is this true or just a vicious rumour? Steam has made me into a believer. I just love online databases.

It's a wrong decision. I understand that they're doing it out of love for the genre and because it would get a poor review in it's current state. A bad review however, and thus less profit, is the only thing a publisher would understand. If it's released, it's released. Give it a considerable less score and advice people not to buy until it's out of beta-state.

I don't play games that are perceived as universally fun if I disagree. When it comes to my own enjoyment only my own subjective opinion matters. So you're 100% correct.

About bloody time Battlefront went and did something noteworthy again! Back to the success formulae. This is good news I will be watching closely.

Our lives would've been much much worse if we didn't have bureaucracy. Every - and any - large organization is unmanageable without bureaucracy. Even matrix organized orgs has their share of bureaucracy. Sorry for the derailment.

This is something I've thought about many times. With todays processing power this could prove to be a dream-game for any wargamer. There's several of the old tactical flight wargames that could be renewed with success I think. I'm certain there's a market if done correct.

The success of right-wing political parties depends on a number of universal variables, although their strenght might fluctuate one nation to another. Found it. Knew I read a paper on the subject. For those interested: http://www.ccsr.ac.uk/qmss/seminars/2008-crossnat/documents/Lubbersetal.pdf

Totally agree on the 64-bit advice. I really regret not buying a 64-bit Vista when I upgraded last time. When the new Windows release I'm getting 64-bit, if it doesn't come as standard that is.

Stalins O: I'm known to be trolling on the BFC forums am I? Good luck with proving me as a troll. It's also a long time since I was enlightened on this forum. One time, a long time ago that was a daily occurence. I'm sick and tired of people hi-jacking and de-railing threads posting supposedly funny one-liners at the expense of a given few users, and then again Kettler in particular. Kettler haven't asked for my defence and I'm sorry for dragging him into this, but I've watched it for years and I think it's low and cowardice behaviour towards one man. I never could stand bullies myself. I'm tired of ignorant people behaving like they have the authority to decide what should and what shouldn't be discussed. I'm tired of people dismissing debates because they don't find it interesting. If you don't like the tone or setting of a debate either; a) stay away or make your own thread where you can dictate the agenda. The irony is that in the process of pointing out that people should stop de-railing/hi-jacking threads I'm guilty of doing the exact thing myself. For this I apologize, but I'm fed up with this behaviour and I feel I have to speak my mind. Besides there's no discussion about the topic at hand anyway. You say you find the article outrageous. Well good for you! Serously, good for you. I like people with opinions, even differing, contrary to many others. Then tell us in a well reasoned and rational manner why you think that is. Don't just post an ignorant one-liner saying "this is an outrage by someone uninmportant". Maybe that kind of argumentation has served you well in the past, but it doesn't impress me the least. My post isn't about this article in particular. It's about people ridiculing people with conflicting opinions. It's about thread hi-jackings and de-railings. It's about agenda setting. It's about people posting simple one-liners to complex topics and it's about ignorant people who believes they have monopoly on facts. It is however not directed at you in particular as I don't find you neither worse then better than many others. In fact I'd probably stayed out of this discussion entirely, like I've increasingly found myself doing over the last few years. This time I felt I had to speak my mind. As I see it the debating climate is at a rock bottom as it is this forum, so it can't get any worse. The best thing that could happen would be a betterment of this climate, so I have nothing to loose and all to gain. It's about principles for me and not about religion or what some german scholar thinks about Islam. Lastly you say if I disagree with your conclusion - on the topic - I should tell you why. What conclusion are you refering to exactly? If you're talking about your one-liner where you say the discussion is outrageous by an unimportant scholar, I don't regard that as a conclusion. Maybe you're talking about where you say the author is high on cactus juice is your conclusion? It has no rationale, argument or reason as I see it whatsoever. If only it where funny at least. Costard: I for one doesn't expect you to discuss anything. I do, however, expect you to stay out of discussions you don't really have an opnion on or doesn't want to discuss. Just let stupid threads die, but don't de-rail or hi-jack them and no I'm not saying you did. This is just a general statement. Some threads are meant for fun and some aren't. You don't really need a trained eye to spot which is which.

(a) Why is the thesis outrageous? Please be specific, unless you haven't read it, but then again you couldn't call it outrageous as you would be clueless of it's content. ( So only important, and thereby established, scholars have ideas worthy of discussion? © Let us hypothetically deem the article Mr. Kettler refered unimportant, or even flawed, for the sake of argument. Does that make the article unable to teach us something or expose us to a new way of thinking? (d) Why isn't it relevant to anything and how are you certain it's not going to change anything? What do you build this opinion on? Maybe you didn't really come here to discuss the article at all. Maybe you just came here to post some 'enlightened' one-liners on Kettlers expense while you're in reality clueless and ignorant? Maybe you have nothing interesting to contribute with at all? Is fact a normative ideal seen from your perspective? Is any other deviant ideas and philosopies unworthy of discussion? Is the world black and white according to your perception? Can you hi-jack and de-rail any discussion not conforming to this ideal? It's not about this article in particular. I've seen this behaviour over several years. Many of the BFC users are cowards and bulllies who move in unison picking on anyone that doesn't share their views. I'm not pointing at anyone in particular. You know who you are. The sad thing is that this once great forum is becoming more and more predictable.

How come Kettler bothers with this board is beyond me. He's obviously intellectually superior to many of the petty personal attacks, thread de-railings and unintelligent one-liner responses many of his interesting topics generate. Many of his topics are out of the standard box, granted, but they could generate interesting exchange of views. And no, this is not an attempt of sarcasm from my behalf. I'm just tired of all the ridiculing of an inquisitive man I've witnessed over the years. Many here would evolve as intellectual human beings if they took the time to discuss topics in a rational manner. The BFC forum isn't what it used to be, either that or I'm not the same as when I started going here many years ago. I'm finding the exchange of important rational thought to have lessened over the years. This place has grown stale and predictable. Ah well. Who cares. It's your loss anyway. I have other interesting people to debate with and open my mind to new ideas.

Makes me wonder what else is down there. We think we know, but every year there's new undiscovered species documented.

The m16 had some pretty innovative features like; plastic frame (reduced weight) and straight stock/butt (easier to aim during fire). I'm sure there's more but I'm not an M-16 grog. The rifle is several hundreds years old so you won't see any revolutions frequently anymore. There's also tons of extras invented to the rifles although it's not directly related to your topic. Stuff like optical sights, grenade launchers, suppressors and so on.

I've been surprised at how the US automobile industry has gone against the global trend of developing smaller and more fuel-efficient cars. In my opinion it's a case of a whole industry failing to catch a global tendency. When increasing groups of customers are starting to buy imports someone should've been asking questions. USA has always been a proud car manufacturer/developer and so it will in the future. The laws of market dictate this, plus there's a century of knowhow involved. I think this will be healthy for the industry. It's about that time to lift the rug and do some in-house cleaning.

He could've taken off his shirt earlier, he didn't flex his muscles enough and there wasn't enough close-ups.

How about answering the Freak's question instead of derailing the thread?

The more evil, the better the chorus. Remember the Soviets? They were known to sing one heck of a chorus. And there's always those religious nutters in Rome. You can't get much more evil than that.

Being a war hero sure didn't help Kerry against Bush.

+1 tenletterword?

I never believed USA would elect a coloured man, at least not in this century. Congratulations for proving me wrong. Even though his predecessor is George W. Bush, there's a huge financial crisis going on, you got a record deficit, US global empathy is at an all time low and you're knee-deep in a war where you've been looking for WMD's since 2001 this is something you can be proud of. I don't know of any other western democratic country that has elected a coloured man as it's head-of-state. You've even beat the most liberal of European countries in this regard. Hell half our parliament is female, but electing a non-caucasian prime minister is still many years to come. This is how you keep the american dream alive. Regardless of your political views, this is something you can be proud. The people screaming rascism every time someone disagrees with them just got it much harder. Come to think of it maybe we should do it as well.

This is also a game that will be heavily modded. Expect great things in the coming months.

I like it. I think it's wonderfully tacky. Shows you don't take yourself too seriously and the camel toe.. ehh.. well you have to have good confidence to wear a suit like that. Kudos.

I see a few of you think EVE gets dull rather quickly. I couldn't disagree more. I've been playing the game for several years, although on and off at times. Any game gets boring after a while, but not every game manage to suck you in again. That's exactly how EVE works on me. I always end up playing the game again. I have a gallente pilot with well over 20 million SP. I rate games on duration played or how long they manage to keep my interest. That means games like Civilization, Pirates, Diablo, Fallout and the likes is rated as great games by me. Oh yeah and Combat Mission as it kept my interest for years. EVE Online is also one of those games - among a few more. Like in any MMO how fun the game will become is directly linked to the community you belong to. This mechanism is not different in EVE. So my tip is try to find out what you like about the game and post an application for a fitting corporation on the EVE forums. There's always corps looking for pilots. I'm sure none of you will have any difficulties finding a good corp as you're all well spoken and intelligent - well most of you anyway I'm in a small communist PvP corporation with a +90% tax. When corp funds are getting low we usually take a week off to mine resources. This will keep us going for quite some time depening on our war luck in the coming weeks/months. We got rules for what we can commandeer and there's some red-tape involved to replace lost ships to justify the ISK loss. You need to meet a minimum req to be able to commandeer certain ships. We seldom or never fly expensive ships unless we're on alliance maneuvers or flying with Band of Brothers. We do have Rorqs and Carriers in the corp although we almost never use them in anything but mining ops. This might not be for everyone but I like it. Besides there's all sorts of corps you can join. A typical roaming gang in my corp consist of fast ships like tech 2 frigates and a few support ships one or two jumps behind. Maybe one or two heavy assault cruisers or force recons and an interdictor on call. This is great fun. If the **** hits the fan the fast ships will have a great chance of escaping and if we loose a few the cost is minimal. Besides no one should underestimate a tech 2 frig. A blaster fitted Taranis which I usually flies deals 212dps while going well over 700m/s without a MWD. Good luck trying to track it with a battleship! If we find something really interesting we hold them down until our alliance - AXIOM - or BoB arrives with the big guns. Before I joined my corp I didn't play EVE as it should've been played. EVE is best in 0.0 space where you have to look over your shoulders all the time. Granted we might have one of the best flight commanders in the game. He's got a sixth sense of when to break off or how to find targets and you always know what to do when he's running the show. I just love crashing mining operations or commiting enemy gangs on 20-30 ships in battle, thinking we're easy frigate kills, while we have big guns incoming. Eve might not be for everyone I agree to that. It's got a very high learning curve, but because of that it's virtually teen and smack talk free. It's the thinking mans MMO. It's very realistic compared to other games. If you want to become 'all that you can be' you have to learn the complex combat mechanics like tracking, falloff, scanner usage, ship types and much much more. This game is very tense and I could probably write several essays of single encounters in low-sec space where I both have dealt and been given hell. The minute you venture below 0.5 security you'd better start looking over your shoulder. I love it! Ehh.. this post got a bit long but I was interrupted a few times while writing it so it got a bit longer than I first anticipated.

Fallout 3 is good but sadly I don't have the power to run it sufficiently at the moment. I bought a new 700W PSU and a Club3d Radeon 4870 overclocked edition a few weeks ago. The 4870 didn't work in EVE online so I had to return it. It had the frequency jumping problem and Club3d didn't fix the BIOS in time like Sapphire did so I had to return it. Now I'm waiting for an nVidia MSI GTX280 to be delivered in the mail. Yeah I know a 4870x2 or a 9800x2 is quicker, but they're also louder and generates more heat with their double gpu-cores. They're also at maximum potential while the GTX280 isn't. In a year or so I'll probably buy another 280 and SLI it.