Monte Carlo

I've never voted Labour, never will and have contempt for those who did. Then again, save for a few thousand people in a small corner of Scotland, nobody actually voted for Gordon Brown.

No s**t, Sherlock. Please re-read my post, although I suppose I might have misread yours..

You haven't really studied the speeches of Mr. Ahmadinejad, have you? IMO the Egyptian army has played a blinder, they now look like the genuine protectors of the people from the nasty politicians and their scary, craven security police. Then again Sadat and Mubarak were both army officers, right? Unlikely. North Africa is fairly settled by Middle Eastern standards. Gaddafi is tamed. The USA has no appetite for foreign military adventures under Obama. The West will probably offer support, open and covert, to any stable regime that replaces Mubarak, it's one of the things that underpins the Cold War we all call 'peace' in the region.

Mubarak regime begins talks with the Muslim Brotherhood: I don't think the Egyptian people will want to swap one form of totalitarianism for another. Nonetheless, I must consider my shares portfolio: anybody selling defence kit to Israel is a no-brainer.

:: shrugs :: Doesn't do anything for me.

Am I alone in wondering why on earth Gemma Arterton keeps getting offered such great roles?

:: shrugs :: Some guys on this forum who've played and posted about it seemed to like it.

I think you got some time of power-up XP ring or stat-boosting thingumajig.

Now CoHO is shutting down I've started playing modded CoH Eastern Front and Op. Market Garden. OMG is a persistent world mod where you make your own unit in a style reminiscent of the Close Combat games - i.e. no resource points and base-building. It turns CoH on it's head - I thought I was quite good until now.

Although you are now my hero du jour and I would happily buy you a beer. The anecdote was worth the error.

My life was nothing but a succession of one-night stands with desirable women before marrying an even more beautiful one. She's also loaded. I have no regrets. So sorry, I'm struggling to empathise with Wals on this one. But I hope, whatever it is, it all works out for y'all.

Downloaded the DoW2 demo. It's OK, and yes it's a relic game so suppression, grenades, strategic points, demo charges... I'm playing Company of Heroes but with Space Marines. But it isn't grabbing me for some reason, it's a bit slow moving and not at all visceral.

I think it's interesting that my post triggered some WTF-style challenges and hostility. Note that there is no judgement or criticism of Islam. I respect all of the great world religions, even though I am not a believer myself. Put simply, though, Islam is a political religion in a way that Christianity is no longer. Of course Christianity is political, has political views and a political dimension, but in the West it is acknowledged that it is an adjunct to democracy not an integral part of the machine. That isn't to say that it is axiomatic that any government in an Islamic country will be a theocracy, just that (as in Turkey) it will be a dimension more acute than in Western Europe. As for Zoraptor, I have to defer to what is presumably your superior knowledge of the Ottoman Empire, turn-of-the-century Levantine politics, Islamic jurisprudence and the inner workings of the Turkish army.

Limiting choice and recycling assets then selling them as 'innovations' are all part of the EmoWare USP!

:: shrugs :: I liked the first one, I like the campy, uber-macho WH40K setting, I like RTS games. I hated the new Warcraft when it came out, though. I'm fairly conservative about games, I like genres to have certain features as a given. In a RTS an element of resource management is one of them.

^ Yes, I agree an academic Kindle-type device with a browser format for reference must be only a matter of time.

You don't need them, but some of us like them. Is there a DOW2 demo I can try out before I buy?

At the end of the day Israel had two Muslim 'allies' left, and I use the word allies in a regional context - i.e. not actively plotting against her. They were Egypt and Turkey. Turkey got the AK party and Attaturk's secular dream is dead. Then you had the flotilla. So that's Turkey out. Now I agree the MB is a bogeyman, a turnip ghost, but even moderate Arab states are antipathetic to Israel. It's the way it is. Imagine (and I'm being optimistic) that you get a reasonably moderate government where the extent of religious influence is analagous to the AK party in Turkey. That's another tick in the 'Not Very Favourable to Israel' column. What does Israel have to do? Er, spend squillions on restructuring her military and re-defending her Western borders. Israel's numerous enemies are emboldened. And so on. Of course, it doesn't mean that Egyptians must suffer the ignominy of a totalitarian state just so international policy analysts can sleep safely in their beds at night, but in reality that's where we were with Mubarak. As for the Islam / Democracy argument, well hyperoble rules the roost on both sides. But for a Muslim the secular and the divine are indivisible. The Koran is as much a political as religious tract. I've said it before on this forum, the 'Render unto God what is God's and Caesar what is Caesar's' moment never happened in Islam. This isn't pejorative, this is simply the truth. Try and look at it through Muslim eyes, the idea that religion has to have some sort of influence or say in political discourse. Turkey is a relatively stable, democratic country. It has internal tensions that flow from a religious dimension in it's politics. This is probably the best we can hope for in Egypt.

This is the sort of thing I'm talking about, stuff I hadn't thought of. Educationally, the Kindle is revolutionary. In developing countries, for example, you will be able to provide students with a library's worth of books without having to actually build a library and store thousands of copies. I will mourn the passing of the book, personally, then again I'm sure in the 1500s monks mourned the passing of illuminated script.

The problem with Utopians of any stripe or political hue is that they are all, quintessentially, authoritarian. So I say No.

Although I agree with Kaftan that the Kindle is an inferior product to a tablet, the fact is that it is cheap, effective and appealing to non-technically minded early adopters. The people I know who are buying into Kindle are the type of folks who would be unlikely to buy into a relatively complex piece of technology like an ipad. Especially older people. It will get cheaper, more feature-driven and hopefully more aesthetically pleasing. I like the pager v cellphone line, but I think it still misses the point. The popular appeal of this device, along with clever marketing and its ease-of-use means it is a game-changer for the world of books and publishing.

I think you've missed the point. In a couple of years the Kindle will be extremely cheap. ipads etc will not.

A colleague has bought a Kindle. I was playing with it yesterday. Although it's ugly and I don't like the look or feel of it, it is a credible piece of technology. I can absolutely see the benefits of it, for example travelling or commuting sans books is quite appealing. So is the book destined to die, or simply become a niche, prestige item no longer mass-produced (not yet, but in a generation)? What does it mean for publishing as an industry, as a generation who don't see why they need to pay for anything much in terms of entertainment media comes of age? Discuss.

Relic is closing the Company of Heroes Online beta on March 31st. The announcement was cryptic, but it was obvious that they weren't making money, and it's a notoriously tough game to get into as a n00b in competitive play. I'd sunk about

Am thinking of picking up Dawn of War 2 and Chaos Rising. Any thoughts from RTS fans here?