McPhee

GEORGIA Total personnel: 26,900 Main battle tanks (T-72): 82 Armoured personnel carriers: 139 Combat aircraft (Su-25): Seven Heavy artillery pieces (including Grad rocket launchers): 95 RUSSIA Total personnel: 641,000 Main battle tanks (various): 6,717 Armoured personnel carriers: 6,388 Combat aircraft (various): 1,206 Heavy artillery pieces (various): 7,550 Source: Jane's Sentinel Country Risk Assessments Insane? Maybe. They don't have a huge amount of choice though, if they don't fight they'll loose a large part of their country. They are fighting in the hope that either there'll be a diplomatic solution which reads in their favour or that their allies will step in. One of the 2 will happen, maybe both. No, they don't. They're hoping for some assistance in that matter, much like the Ossetians got from Russia. Look at your numbers, without Russian help there is no way that South Ossetia would have won.

Cheers Getting muddled, a combination of a long day (been awake for over 20 hours) and the 7 years since i did history at school :p It's all coming back now!

Do you know how WWII started? Austria went to war with Serbia because some Serbs assasinated the Austrian Prince. Austria would have crushed Serbia, but other nations got invloved and the whole thing spiraled out of control. The Russia/Georgia situation is similar, Russia are powerful but Georgia are well connected and valuable to certain western nations (mainly the USA). We could, hypothetically speaking, see the US send troops to Georgia to protect their assets. That's the worry, if the US do and it results in fighting between US and Russian forces then it could result in war between the US and Russia. From there everything begins to spiral out of control again. Portugal won't necessarily remain neutral. If European nations start joining a war like that then you won't be far behind.

Yeah, i'm waiting on it as well. It just needs the Russians to take one step out of South Ossetia or Abkhazia and the Americans will be calling it an invasion of Georgia, rushing to help their allies. As soon as we have US tanks shooting Russian tanks we have World War III I'm contemplating joining the army now before all the good jobs are taken :p

The first part we agree on then, prisons are completely useless. This is one occasion where i think they could do some good though, life in a military prison is harder than life in the military. Most of the little brats who would end up there wouldn't last a week before begging for a gun. As for the second, i'm pretty sure we've made that mistake once in the past 10 years. Nobody wants another Afghanistan, especially not on that scale! Nukes are useless in Afghanistan, there's nobody to nuke. All we can do is carry on what we are doing in the hope that it ends eventually. And the UK can not and would not fire a single nuke at Russia, never mind enough to do that to them.

I just stand still. Most of them are thick and get bored quickly, doesn't take em long to launch an attack (20 seconds maybe?)

You wouldn't be laughing for long. If a good portion of our youth won't join then they'll recruit someone else. There's plenty of prison space for you lot if they start letting convicts join the forces Yes, but it's not a threat we can make. Think about how small a nation we are (geographically), if we turned to someone like Russia and said "go to war with us and we'll nuke you" they'd just laugh! They'd blow us to dust with half a douzen missles! It'd take hundreds, maybe even thousands of ours to cover every square-inch of their country.

Hang on, hang on. You wouldn't go? How do you work that one out? If the nation is in a time of need to the point where it must call on National Service to fill the ranks of the Army then you WILL go. Not doing so lets down every one of your peers in this country. With a smaller army every man and woman that goes to war is more likely to be killed. With a smaller army we are more likely to LOSE the war. If war happens then you running away from National Service won't help, it'll just bring the war to our shores that little bit faster. An invasion is a hell of a lot more bloody than fighting on foreign soil, would you really condemn you're friends and family to that sort of fate? It's selfish beyond belief. COWARD. And for those of you that can't bare the thought of hurting someone else; get a different job inside the army. Train as a medic if you want to help people, or work in communications. There's thousands of vital roles that would fall under National Service without involving direct killing.

I think your right, and the Russian's know it too. This whole Georgia incident is really bad stuff! They might well have some right to South Ossetia and Abkhazia, but the problem is that in their minds they also have right to Georgia as well. I can easily see them on Georgian soil before the end of the year (they technically are now, except the land wasn't under Georgian control). I worry that this whole thing could explode in to WWIII, it just depends how greedy Russia decide to be and how strong they think they are.

Holy shit. I never expected to be reading this! He was too young

Can anyone suggest a good 360 arcade stick? The controller is beginning to annoy me in Soul Calibur IV! I always wind up using a really wierd grip; index + middle finger of my right hand on the YBAX buttons, 3rd finger on RB and little finger on RT, left hand as normal. I'm thinking a stick will be a lot easier/faster.

Dent used to work at internal affairs, he knew those officers were corrupt because he had investigated some of them. He warned Gordon, Gordon ignored him and defended his officers. The result? Rachel was murdered. In Dent's view if Gordon had done as he should have done then Rachel would still be alive. Then again, maybe Dent thought Gordon was corrupt as well?

Nice going! Some of those are really good With all the Batman talk at the moment i decided i had to do Robin. Will post pics later, it's not perfect but not a bad likeness.

I wasn't suggesting Damian, just a Damian style look. Robin could even be carrying the sword at the start, he doesn't have to have the same moral fibre as Batman. The way i see it playing out is Robin is working on his own as a masked vigilanty, inspired by Batman. Annoyed by this Bruce stats to look in to it and attempts to discover his identity. Robin saves Batman's life in a fight against (insert villain here) Black Mask discovers that Robin is in-fact Dick Grayson, and sets about kidnapping and torturing his parents as revenge for the trouble Robin has been causing him. Batman stumbles across all this happening, but Black Mask shoots the tortured Graysons in the head before Batman has any chance of saving them. Black Mask escapes and phones Dick Grayson up, giving him all the gory details of his parent's deaths. Enraged by the death of his parents Dick swares to track down and kill Black Mask, he walks straight in to a trap. Whilst all this was going on Bruce discovers Robin's identity and hits the horrible realisation of why the Graysons were murdered. He dons his gear and sets off to track down Robin/Dick, following him all the way to Black Mask's hideout. Batman saves Robin and together they defeat Black Mask, but Robin attempts to kill him in revenge for his parent's deaths. Batman stops him. From this moment Bruce decides he needs to train Dick to be like him, it's the only way to stop Dick from going down the path that Bruce would have followed without Ra's Al Ghul's help. The Batman and Robin partnership is born.

Robin could work. Just have some kid being daft enough to take inspiration in Batman, make his own costume, go galavanting off in the middle of the night etc. followed by him saving Batman's arse. Later on have his parents get killed, with Batman witnessing it yet unable to save them (at this point the Bat doesn't know who Robin is, or that these are his parents). When Robin finds out his parents are dead he goes off on a huge revenge-spree. Bruce discovers who he is, and that he failed to save the kid's parents, goes out looking for Robin. He finds him running amok, calms him down and takes him under his own wing out of the sheer guilt of the situation. Instant Bruce Wayne/Dick Grayson combo. The excuse for Bruce then training Dick is simple, if he doesn't then Dick will only get himself killed in revenge attempts. As for the costume, try a splash of Damian Wayne: To be more specific on the hows and whys, Black Mask discovers who Robin is, captures his parents, tortures them. Batman appears, but Black Mask shoots the Graysons in the head before Bruce can do anything about it. Black Mask gets away and calls Dick up, telling him exactly how his parents died (with the idea of enraging the boy, luring him in to a trap). BM's plan works, but Batman is close behind Dick after discovering his identity. Batman and Robin defeat Black Mask and his goons together, but Batman has to stop Robin from killing Black Mask.

It's an odd problem on this TV, apparently it can map 1:1 over VGA but loads of people have had problems with it. I suggest asking for some help in this thread here: http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=485190 A DVI-HDMI cable probably won't solve your problems, i had a look through that thread and the general consensus is that the TV does not map 1:1 through HDMI

The 3030 doesn't have a DVI port AFAIK, i can check if you like but i'm 99% sure it doesn't. Are you sure you're not hooking it up to the VGA port?

A few that i don't think have been mentioned: Constantine The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Darkman I liked Constantine, LXG was okay-ish as long as you've never read the books and Darkman is pretty cheesy.

This man speaks the truth. I remember back in the CS:S days when some people in my clan watched me play and were astounded that i was actually any good; i couldn't aim for shit! The only reason i was half decent was because i thought my way through the game. I knew where i expected the enemy to be, and where the enemy expected me to be and most of the time i was right Shotguns took care of the crappy aim I still see the same thing now. In Team Fortress 2 i play Engineer and Pyro the most. Neither need a great deal of skill to play, they just need thought and as a result i'm pretty good as both. The big mold-breaker is the Sniper; it's my highest scoring and 2nd most played class for some odd reason.

I think i posted the wrong Sony, this is the one i meant: http://www.electrosaver.co.uk/product_details.asp?id=LCD%20TV&Product=Television&productid=KDL26T3000 Still not sure though, i remember hearing that one of the 2 is very, very good

What TV is it? Sounds like it's probably the TV's fault, it's overscanning the picture in the first instance and the second one is likely down to the TV not supporting HDTV resolutions through that port.

Was playing a guy online yesterday who was doing that! Saw him slaughter the other 3 people on the server with barely a scratch! I've never heard an American teenager as pissed off as he was when i chose the smallest arena and got him with a ring-out 15 seconds in :p He was literally screaming at me! The flying kick is Maxi's solution to that problem, practice doing it without a run-up and you'll quickly have something that can get you back in to the action. There's a few jumping nunchuck moves that are useful for closing gaps aswell. I can't remember the button combos off the top of my head though so you'll have to look in the moves list for em. The key to beating someone like Kilik (assuming the other person ain't very good) is to flying kick as soon as the round starts and then keep up an offensive for the whole round. If you stay on top of him there's buger all most players can do about it! Use horizontal combos when he's on the ground, they're a lot more difficult to dodge when you get up than vertical combos and kicks are. Most players go straight for an attack as soon as they stand up, and as Maxi is faster they're pretty much buggered from the off if they don't accidentally dodge the attack.

Budget Mr Jordonian? The best 3 are: Panasonic TX-26LXD70: http://www.empiredirect.co.uk/content/products/details/?modelcode=PAN-TX26LXD70&aid=119&awid=69672 Empire Direct, £462 with discount code EM4865 Panasonic TX-LMD70: http://www.soundandvision.co.uk/moreinfo/index.asp?product_id=12711&referredby=Google-Adwords&gclid=CNLVu5Cv9pQCFQuJ1QodXktqrQ Sound And Vision, £380.90 Sony KDL-26P3020: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-KDL-26P3020-Widescreen-Bravia-Freeview/dp/B000VZA7PW Amazon, £369.99 All 3 are wall mountable. TBH though 26" TVs are pretty crappy value for money; the 32" versions of the 2 Panasonic TVs are £20 more or something silly!

Hey Hero, how come you ain't on my friends list anymore? Was thinking today that i'd like to play you at this, looked to see if you were online and you ain't there. OK if i re-add you? One thing i've noticed about the online: most of the players are shit and spam one move constantly. Get a good combo in and they're finished, it's only an issue when the spam move is unblockable Then there's the people that kick-spam in order to win by ring-out. How i really, really hate them! The number of fights where i've had someone within the last inch of their life just to get thrown out of the arena is unreal!

DCK!!!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!