Monte Carlo

I saw the cover of that King's Bounty: Armored Princess game. Not only does it have the lamest name of Any. Game. Ever. it also has some of the most egregriously sexist cover art of any game I've seen. Don't get me wrong, I think Germaine Greer is a type of breakfast cereal and I like my Megan Fox screensaver as much as the next bloke, but the iron balconette that poor woman is wearing is just wrong. All properly trained artists study anatomy first for a reason. Cheers MC

This is sage advice indeed Hurlie. In fact I think it's on law school 101, 1st Semester.

England - Germany is always a good match, even for a disinterested old cynic like me. I just think that the Germans in this case will wipe the floor with Ing-Er-Land. There is a wild card, though, nothing gets the plucky Dunkirk spirit up like a game against Der Fatherland.

If DS3 is a bit like SoZ in spirit then this callsign will be quite happy.

Dungeon Siege had the attractive red-head in full armour, albeit tailored for the female form. A non-issue for me.

The Yankees are missing a trick - if they put their backs into it they could have a world-class soccer team and rule the soccer universe. I think, culturally, though you will need dynamite to wean them off baseball and American football. Plus, a 'World Series' where the players only come from one nation is an understandably appealing sporting comfort blanket.

I think US Law Enforcement is too fragmented / balkanised to be able suggest one career route. For example, I think a lot of Federal LE personnel will have law degrees but OTOH you can do a basic policing qualification and spend the rest of the time pootering about as a deputy someplace rural. I knew a top-notch lawyer once, he'd been a detective in a large UK police force - he took it as a post-retirement gig and his operational experience made him very sharp around the (criminal) law. He did his legal training in his spare time, a pretty good investment in himself. The question is that most coppers probably don't want to join the police to become a lawyer when, er, you can just become a lawyer! My advice, having worked around lawyers during my career, is stick to non-criminal law if you want to make some half-decent money. Another aquaintance is an employment lawyer, she loves her job and is very, very good. She earns a commensurate sum of money.

Yes, it is. America should be pleased with themselves, coming at the top of their group and winning favourable terms for Saturday. The England hyperbole will go into overdrive after this modest win, honestly they still look mediocre. Germany will eat them for breakfast if they ever meet.

That's because you're not a real man. REAL MEN AREN'T ASHAMED OF WEARING FUNNY HATS IF THEY HAVE POWERFUL STATS! AS I DID IN DRAGON AGE! ROAAAAAAAAAAAR! I didn't need a vanity view to be impressed by the Dragon Age Funny Hats. The wizard hats in dragon age looked like condoms with teeth. Sorry to get all Dave Cronenbourg on yo' ass.

In the UK the Military Police isn't seen as the corps of choice and the military legal services are where you go if you can't get a pupillage in chambers. OTOH, the US military got with the programme about veteran career development, pastoral support and post-service opportunities after WW2 with the G.I. Bill, something this country is just starting to get it's collective head around. Having worked with law grads in non-legal or para-legal roles I'd still say it's a useful degree. 1. You develop an analytical skill-set 2. If you can master stated cases and torts, then most other vocational rules and processes are pretty easy 3. There's a bit of self-discipline involved in a law degree, the single most crucial virtue in any career Lastly, law is something you can always return to. The career field you worked in will have a directly relevant legal equivalent, be it software development or entertainment or corporate law. And I speak as one who isn't a fully paid-up member of the lawyer's fan club.

Ha, Wrath I was going to link to that! The article is interesting on several levels: 1. The General's naivety in media management (best encapsulated as 'The First Rule of Fight Club is: You don't talk about Fight Club') 2. The coruscating sense of truth that comes out of the article, the idea that Afghanistan is a towering piece of foreign policy bull****, we are sucked into it by default, it's hopeless and the best thing we could do is police it like 1920's Mesopotamia, from the air, with bombs 3. The idea that people I know and value are risking their lives for people like Karzai 4. The shiney-eyed faith of the General's posse in their doctrine, reminds me of reading about the 'True Believers' in Vietnam 5. Although I will admit to be being taken with the General's macho, no-BS, I've-got-nun-chucks-in-my-bag attitude, if I'm honest I like my generals to be a little more cultured and cerebral 6. The journo's assertion that this is a totally US affair despite the ten thousand British service-people in theatre - we really do need to leave the Americans to Chuck-Norris their way out of this one I'm afraid. Pakistan is going to be a failed state, and yet all we do is it give her money. It's the politics of appeasement, personally I'd be aggressively forging strategic alliances with India, the safest and most progressive nuclear-armed state in the region. Cheers MC

Rome: Total Realism is excellent, but a bit of a culture shock for fans of the vanilla game. Try it out, I liked it.

^ Purk, check out Hackmaster, the humorous pen and paper Hack'n'Slash RPG based on 1E AD&D. It is waiting for a computer game version.

^ Dude, all you need is a hammer and some duct tape.

I'm in two minds about the vanity view thing. As some of you know, I'm a Company of Heroes addict and the zoom-in view is awesome... but I never use it. Hey, I guess it doesn't take up a lot of assets and would be in there anyway.

I only agree with Morgie occasionally, but the man really is on the money with this one. The problem is, in fact, that Diablo et.al do the action RPG thing so well... you have to wonder how to beat it. I don't think you can, so why I'm glad to see Obz involved in this project is that they will inject a little bit of plot, character and dry humour into a not-too-unfamiliar action RPG package and it will sparkle. As it happens, I'm with the OP in the general spirit of what he's saying too.

When corporate shills speak like this where I work, we refer to it as Bullsh*t Bingo.

I feel sorry for the referee in France V S.A. Honestly, I thought it was the bicycle-kick to the head too. It's not as if France can really complain about dodgy referee's decisions, really, is it?

I feared that Alcatraz was going to be cheesy, but happily I was wrong. The National Parks run one of the most interesting sites of national and historic interest I've been to anywhere. The audio tour is excellent.

So, you are bored and hungry. The only place on the internet you should be heading is Pimp That Snack where you will discover culinary genius in abundance, enjoy and use the rest of this thread to thank me profusely for showing you the path of gastronomic awesomeness.

I dunno, I just like the idea of being able to (a) interact with the environment using magic and (b) make magic directly relevant to the situation you are in. By that, I mean being able to make curses where you choose the specific effect (i.e. a clumsiness curse, a repulsion curse, a plague of frogs...) and I really REALLY want to interact with scenery and terrain like a mentalist poltergeist on acid.

Anything with balalikas usually brings a tear to my eye, as does peeling onions.

The All Blacks chewed up the Welsh like a meatgrinder. Painful to watch.

I saw Daybreakers last night. It was a pretty standard issue vampire sci-fi horror, but with an amusing twist as we saw the ins-and-outs of the vampires as a society in 2019. Liberal vampires argue for human rights on the TV news. All the vampires smoke, heavily, because vampires are immortal. Vampires have cool cars with special daytime-driving technology. Vampires have blood in their coffee the same way we have sugar. And, for some reason, vampires all dress like they live in the 1950's. Don't get me wrong, there are logic voids throughout, but this isn't really the point. Anyway, despite their general bad-assery, vampires are unable to stop packs of resistance fighter humans cutting about in the daytime (led by ex-vampire Willem Dafoe) which is a problem because the world's human blood supply is dwindling, turning the vamps into weird mutant creatures who prey on each other. Ethan 'reluctant vampire' Hawke wants to find a cure for vampirism, but has a problem with his brother, a member of the Vampire Army (it's a bit like the normal army, but with fangs and the requirement for special daytime-fighting protective kit). Anyhoo, that's the basics, there is a pretty clever twist in the tail and it has reasonable production values. I give it a Saturday night-with-a-pizza 7/10. By the way, argunig about comic book canon? Puh-leez, it's a movie. All of us who like literature of any sort have accepted that movie adaptations can and will take liberties with the source material. Sometimes for better, usually for worse but it's like making a big deal about microwave meals tasting less authentic than one you just made yourself from fresh ingredients. Cheers MC

At least England had a good game of rugby against Australia today, like I say the real world cup takes place in New Zealand next year.