Agiel

Oh I totally agree that in Fallout: New Vegas and TES it's plenty fun to mess with the Console Commands. But it goes without saying that what you do online affects other people. I can only imagine that the person who unleashes these Dark Souls trainers upon the community are as psychopathic as the people who use them. More notes from my travels: Got to Sinner's Rise from the Lost Bastille and died on the boss. For whatever odd reason, From Software thought it was a good idea to put a bonfire next to three mobs that immediately aggro on you as soon as you respawn there; not exactly conducive getting summoned to try and become human again. I suppose this is one of those times you're supposed to be glad they don't respawn after you kill them a certain number of times (which I made a point of doing just that once). Also this likely has to do with the hoard of players hopping on at launch, but it's unfortunate that you can't really afford to be choosy on who you summon given that a potential sign is liable to already be taken the moment it appears.

Well that didn't take long. Had my first invasion in my own world in Dark Souls II PC and lo and behold it was a cheater. Landed several good hits on him without doing any damage (saw no numbers, he had no shield and I even landed a backstab on him). If Steam recent players was accurate, hopefully my report was on the right player. Thankfully I got iced near a bonfire while I was waiting to get summoned so no big deal to corpse run to get my souls back. So far as online gaming goes, that's just the lowest of the low.

Man wants his own Tiger tank. Can't get one. Builds his own:

After completing "Forest of the Fallen Giants," I inadvertently went to the "Lost Bastille" without knowing that I was still way underleveled for that zone. Unfortunately, I managed to get to the boss (with the aide of some phantoms) and immediately got curb-stomped. Cue me spending Effigies so that I can summon some help to try to beat the boss so that I could recover my souls several times until finally one run I failed to get to them before I died. Lost something to the order of 30k souls.

Working through Dark Souls 2 at the moment, rolling as a dextrous, agile mage. Beat the Last Giant and then, since I leveled up and had no significant amount of souls to lose, summoned a phantom to beat the Pursuer, pelting him with my magic (which still took a fairly long time). "Easy mode" you say? Yeah, well I guess that's why you need a toon with high intelligence to roll as a mage I have also adopted a policy when it comes to souls to "use them, or lose them," now that enemies won't respawn after a certain amount of times they've been killed (no more farming souls in the Painted World).

Simon Ostrovsky released after being held for more than 48 hours. Great news to say the least even if he is a bit worse for wear after the ordeal. Though after two close calls I don't think anyone would think less of him if he called it quits now. His latest video, albeit some time before his captivity and relating more to the shootout a few days ago attributed by pro-Russian elements to Right Sector:

Simon Ostrovsky of Vice News, famous for his reports from Ukraine called Russian Roulette, has been held since Monday by Pro-Russian militias after covering a press conference by the new self-styled mayor of Sloviansk. His last Tweet, dated April 21st, is (worryingly) as follows:

Continuing from last time, may as well call this portion the "Red Storm Rising 2014" hour: 3b. The question is does the Russian navy have an aircraft carrier? The answer: Depends on what day of the week it is. When the navy has to puff its chest, saying that it is a truly blue-water capable force, the Admiral Kuznetsov is one. When it has to do things like going through the Dardanelles and Bosphorus straits to get back to its home port (the Montreux Convention terms prohibit vessels with tonnage larger than a cruiser from going through the Turkish straits) then it "totally isn't one, it's an aircraft carrying missile cruiser." Then again, it isn't terribly good at being an aircraft carrier in any case: The years haven't been kind for Russian naval aviation and the few Su-33 navalised Flankers in service are on the verge of falling apart before the Navy's very eyes. To add to this, this aircraft has absolutely no ground attack capabilities, the Kuznetsov can only carry twelve of them, and can only feasibly launch two at a time, so it can hardly use its airpower in the same way a Nimitz Carrier and its carrier air wing does. Hell, the Russians have even looked to foreign defense contractors for their foreign force projection. So for naval force projection, that leaves two options: Maritime bombers and submarines. We’ll tackle the bombers first. The most modern and primary maritime bomber of the Russian armed forces, as had been the case since the late Cold War for the USSR, was the Tu-22M Backfire, of which there are currently 58 in service with the Navy. Their primary anti-shipping weapon is the AS-4/Kh-22 “Kitchen,” a sea-skimming supersonic missile. On paper, it’s an extremely capable weapon, outperforming the western AGM-84 Harpoon in respects of range and speed (though not in VLO-capabilities; the Kitchen has twice as large a radar cross section as the Harpoon on the frontal profile). Against lightly-escorted merchant shipping it certainly could do, to say the least quite a lot of damage.However the Tu-22M can only feasibly carry two (theoretically it can carry three, though a third missile would impose serious reductions in range and speed on the launching aircraft). Against something heavier, like an American CVBG which has a multi-layered defense network escorting a merchant convoy, the math doesn’t quite add up in its favour and I find all the doom and gloom about how it renders surface navies (or even carriers) totally obsolete a totally dubious claim (I feel the explanation goes beyond the scope of this topic, though if I'm prodded to post it or PM it I might; I was already 3/4 of the way through it before I decided against it). Then there's submarines. The Russian navy currently has fifteen fast attack boats, most of them Akula class SSNs, roughly comparable to the 688(i) Los Angeles Class boats, as well as several Oscar class SSGNs, and for my money are the most viable naval projection force that the Russians have at their disposal. However even then in any potential conventional shooting war they are heavily outgunned by the many ASW frigates and aircraft at the disposal of NATO fleets and would be restricted to more defensive roles rather than attacking North Atlantic convoys for a prospective Third Battle of the Atlantic, to say nothing of the US Hunter-Killer submarine fleet that heavily outnumbers it (it's often said the best way to hunt a submarine is another submarine).

Finding out the Imperial Officer who briefs you before missions in TIE Fighter was Guy Siner (Leutnant Hubert Gruber), decided to do an "'Allo! 'Allo!" marathon. After having that knowledge, I find myself looking forward more to Gruber's scenes than Herr Flick's this time around.

You never wondered why there was an F-15C painted to look like a Su-27 on the main menu screen? :D Yup, these "Aggressors" are pilots who are perhaps among the most talented fighter jocks out there, and are allowed to interview former "OPFOR" pilots (some of them defectors during the Cold War, though after the collapse of the USSR there were plenty of former Eastern Bloc pilots to offer insight into potential OPFOR tactics and doctrine) as well as given access otherwise top secret NSA intercepts for the purpose of figuring out how the "bad guys" think and fly and preparing allied pilots to face them. One I read about went so far as to listen to the Soviet National Anthem to pump himself up before every time he went up.

An F/A-18C with an NSAWC "Aggressors" paint scheme I see.

I do not know if an image with Herr Starr's head in full view is entirely appropriate for this forum

That is to underestimate the contributions Lend Lease made towards the Soviet Union's industrial and warfighting capabilities in World War II. To be sure they had built more T-34s than the US made M4s, but this capacity was impossible without shipments of advanced machining tools and steel when they hastily moved production from Kharkiv to the Urals. Then there's the stuff the Soviets didn't make in great numbers: Radios, reconnaissance vehicles, personnel carriers, medical supplies, and trucks (the favoured chariot of the famous Katyusha rocket artillery launchers were American-made Studebakers), to say nothing of the P-39 Airacobras that ensured the Germans did not have total air supremacy after the Soviet Air Force had been decimated in the opening stages of Barbarossa, then there's aircraft carriers, submarines, long-range strategic bombers, and high altitude, long-endurance fighters. Could the Soviets still have won without all of that? Maybe, though I doubt they would have been the ones to raise a flag over the Reichstag.

I did read about them a couple of months ago. Odd to say the least, almost as odd as there being Hitler admirers in Russia of all places.

Somewhat movie-related: Stood behind a woman at a store where they had rewards programs, wherein the clerk would ask one his or her phone number so that the customer would earn points for store credit. She gave her phone number and the clerk asked "Erin Brockovich?" to confirm in a totally uninterested "I really don't want to be here" tone. The woman then answered her phone with a conversation that had something to do with "particles per square inch" and other lawyerly jazz. I was tempted to speak up, but didn't since the only thing that I could think of at the spur of the moment was "Hey! You're that lady they made that movie about! You were played by Julia Roberts!" Perhaps attesting to my film nerd status, almost everyone else I related this story hadn't heard of the movie, much less who Erin Brockovich was.

Got us confused given you've offered weak to no evidence to the contrary that the Abrams is anything but a very, very good tank, especially when compared to the modern-day Ronson that is the T-72.

Hey! There was only one way to play Fallout: New Vegas, and that was playing a gunslinging, quickdrawing Cowgirl using Lucky and the Ranger Sequoia with a crit-build!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/04/10/chinese-dad-built-this-high-powered-working-tank-for-his-6-year-old/?tid=hp_mm Mostly "d'aaaaawwwww" and the rest a bit scary. Something that's three tons on treads isn't something you take lightly, especially for a six year old.

A loss for words when confronted with cited evidence that it's no more vulnerable than the T-72S, huh? Show of hands people, would you take the Abrams, or the "Communal Funeral Urn"? Because I can offer a host of other aspects of the T-72 that makes it a flawed design for COIN operations (limited gun depression/elevation, shortage of passive thermal imaging sites, poor reverse speed).

Not playing, but longingly watching LPs of Star Wars: TIE Fighter and recalling days of yore flying TIE Interceptors against X-Wings and Z-95 Headhunters ("Shields double forwards? Wot's dat?"), and praying that this is the year GOG finally does a re-release of it.

Given that it impacted the side armour then even I wouldn't be enormously surprised: As we can see, against most of the side profile fairly modern warheads (AT-5B Spandrel has been estimated to have ~780mm RHAe penetration at 0 degrees LOS) can theoretically penetrate and have enough overmatch to ruin the crew's day... However, this only highlights how much more vulnerable designs like the T-72 and the T-80 are in this environment as the Syrian Rebellion and the Chechen Wars show. Both the Abrams and the Challenger 2 boast safety features that cannot be implemented in many Soviet designs: Automatic fire-suppression, ammunition separated from the crew compartment, blastproof doors and blowout panels for the Abrams, water storage for the Chally, and semi-ready rounds stored separately from the tank on the rear turret bustle. As Soviet and Russian-designed tanks were quite small, these systems were simply impossible to implement, as every inch of the interior had to be dedicated to some kind of machinery or storage. As a result, ammunition and propellant was exposed to the crew compartment (not helped by the fact that Soviet doctrine called for more high-explosive anti-personnel rounds be stored in proportion to *relatively* more inert APFSDS, which the tanks in Syria likely do not carry at all). Thus, even while there was the odd incident where an Abrams or Challenger was considered a "mission kill," the crew likely got off with little to no injuries and was back in action not too long after, with the tank being recovered and repaired in fairly short order. Experience in the Middle East wars showed that the large majority of AFV losses were the result of minor damage that could be easily repaired, however those that experienced internal fire damage or catastrophic explosions were more likely to be completely written off and deemed incapable of being returned to combat service, and this was something the Israelis singled out the Soviet-designed T-62s and T-72s for. What's more, with the proliferation of tandem-charge anti-tank warheads, the dependency of Russian tank designs on ERA prove to be a liability for the Syrians. In relation to Steel Beast's estimate for the M1A1(HA) and the Challenger 2's side armour estimates above, Lakowski's estimates for T-72B with Kontakt-1 ERA (roughly equivalent to what the Syrians are using now) protection. Side Hull: 210–260mm HEAT Side Turret: 260mm KE & 340mm HEAT, 210mm HEAT if a tandem-charge warhead is used. Ammunition storage for the T-72/T-90: Plenty of GoPro videos exist showing the fate of many Syrian tanks as a result of ammunition fires and catastrpohic explosions, but I'll refrain from linking to them. *EDIT*: A tanker contact of mine has relayed to me that this was an Abrams inherited by the Iraqi army that has the dU armour inserts removed

"The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy or the grey aliens or the 12 foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control. The truth is more frightening, nobody is in control. The world is rudderless." -Alan Moore

I'm sorry, but even the ones whose hearts were still with Crimea still had an oath and wore Ukrainian military uniforms until the very end, and I didn't see any in those videos walk up to gate and unlock it to let the self-defense forces in. The Ukrainian personnel by a lot of accounts were quite well within their rights to open fire on them as soon as they entered as they entered without invitation what is internationally recognised as sovereign Ukrainian territory insomuch as an embassy or a consulate might be even if they're surrounded by a foreign country. They didn't, because: a.) They'd get ripped to shreds by the crowd and sometimes survival trumps principles. b.) Some of the soldiers did indeed have sympathies for them. c.) Putin could spin the whole incident as "mean Ukrainian Banderans opened fire on helpless, oppressed civilians.

Oh please. 80%, by the Ukrainians own figures, of their troops in the Crimea simply deserted to the Russians. If the Russians wanted a provocation they'd bloody well get one in exactly the same style that Adolf Hitler got one in 1939. But no, the Ukrainians played a magnificent hand with the vast majority of their troops deserting which, startlingly, was exactly what the Russians stated they wanted from the outset and exactly what actually happened. But we know better what they wanted because they're eeeevil Russians who want violence, it's in their blood :1080p roll eyes: Again this is an example of the Scooby Doo Villain Russian caricature. That Putin, evil enough to invade Crimea! But hahaha, he never thought to stage a provocation for a wider incident because he was outwitted by our plucky heroes in Kiev using the Gandhi mantra! And he never thought to expel foreign media either, even if they spent 90% of their time talking to 12% of the Crimean population and taking pictures of the half dozen or so Ukrainian military who didn't defect! But he was even smart enough to state what he wanted defections and actually have that happen as a huge- what I like to call smokescreen of reality- so don't worry peoples, he's still actually a massive threat to our way of lives despite having a pathetic military and non existent economy... Pretzel logic, ho hum, par for the course. Fortunately I'm as always immune to manipulation by people who push shadowy conspiracy theories :smug: Are you going to tell me this was a wholehearted capitulation with Russian airsofters standing behind civilians forcing their way into a Ukrainian base, then actively helping them when they couldn't do it alone?

So you mean you're a lunatic or a reprobate if you assume a shadowy, and possibly fictional, organization is behind every atrocity with flimsy evidence(at best) to support that view? I'm saying that if you take the logic that an absence of evidence is evidence of guilt then you may as well start burning witches. "[W]hat can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." -Christopher Hitchens Speaking of Monty Python, given how Right Sector and Svobada are getting increasingly marginalised on the Ukrainian political scene I've yet to see claims that Mr. Hilter and his dicky old chums Heinrich Bimmler and Ron Vivventrop will arise in Kiev to launch their Nationalist Bocialist rallies come to fruition.