Dr. Zin

As someone who shoots real rifles, an aperture sight is absolutely nothing like a Red-Dot or Holo-Sight. I haven't played CoD, but if you can shoot an M16 or M4 in that game with iron sights - those are aperture sights.

Looks like a combination of video-artifacts and motion blurs caused by flying insects.

The equivalent over here is, sadly, voting for a Third Party canidate - which is what I plan on doing.

Goatse man's nether eye is all seeing.

Currently reading Uncovering Soviet Disasters: Exploring the Limits of Glasnost by James E. Oberg. Interesting read, as it was published in 1989 and thus the Soviets would not admit to any sort of accident that happened within their borders; thus the author tries to investigate purported events through numerous roundabout ways.

Indeed. Epic map and epic demo.

Just about a week or so ago I read an interview with David Gilmour where he said that Pink Floyd were never going to tour again. At the time I thought it was really odd because he seemed to always be the one who wanted to do the tours, but now it makes more sense in the context of Wright being on his deathbed.

The only real weak point in the Deus Ex voice acting is in Hong Kong, and possibly Paris.

I believe that was George Patton (in different phrasing).

Or there can be equilibrium. If one looks at world politics over the last few millenia they will see that actors (i.e. nations and other social groups) within a particular region engage in conflict until an equilibrium is reached. The equilibrium tends to hold until an outside power comes in and upsets the balance. One could look at Western, Northern, and parts of Central Europe and see that equilibrium has been reached between the various social groups there. While there are squabbles and such they are overall quite cooperative. They will likely remain so for some time, maybe even a century or so. The main shifters of power in the world are supernations; which occur when one social group is able to gain access to large amounts of territory. The Persian Empire, the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire the United States, and Russia could be considered supernations. However powerful these supernations are, they all eventually lose cohesion. The central social groups begins to fragment into subcultures, and eventually these subcultures become their own distinct groups. When the supernation becomes fragmented enough it collapses, and these subcultures create their own nations. This brings us back to the beginning of the regional cycle, where nations fight wars among themselves until a balance of power is reached. Of course, this is all just my own view.

If it was going to be settled it would have been settled in Vietnam, or the Iraq War, or the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. The basic fact is that both rifles have great strengths but also fundamental flaws. Every service rifle does. It is a matter of choosing which aspects the designers want to emphasize in the platform. Anyway, I do not forsee any intervention by either the U.S. or European nations in this conflict due to great conseqences such actions would have on the world's balance.

I had a class with a Russian fellow and talked with him a fair bit, and he also said the same thing. Foreigners shouldn't walk the streets of Moscow at night.

That actually is Russia's largest Thermobaric weapon (i.e. the one that can rival a small nuke for scale).

Well Russia has devoted more development to actual Thermobaric bombs, while the U.S. has pretty much limited itself to small arms munitions. Therefore I say Russia has the bigger junk.

Railguns have a number of deficiencies that are unlikely to be overcome (barring any miraculous technological advances) compared to conventional chemical pressure rifles. First, they require absolutely enormous amounts of power. A chemical cartridge is far requires less volume and mass than the battery bank needed to supply the energy for one shot from a railgun. This is unlikely to improve because the reactions used in batteries produce far less energy than the burning nitrocellulose compounds in gun powder. Another big issue with railguns is wear. The rails used to propell the projectile experience tremendous amounts of wear, and need to be replaced frequently. Indeed, in many of the bleeding edge guns the rails must be switched out every few shots due to erosion. The last flaw of the railgun is that its main reccomendation is the velocity that it can impart to a projectile, but increased velocity does not nessecarily mean increased damage to target. For example, let us compare a .22 Long Rifle rimfire with a .223 Remington centerfire cartridge. Both fire .224 caliber projectiles, but the .22LR shoots and 40 grain bullet at 1200FPS, while the .223 throws a 75 grain projectile at 2790FPS. The two areas that the .223 will outperform the .22LR are fluid disruption and penetration. To give an example of fluid disruption, .22LR will poke holes through a container of water, while a .223 will cause it to explode from a pressure wave. When we come back to railguns and chemically propelled guns, you make think to yourself "Ha! The railgun is superior!" In a theoretical sense, you would be correct, but in a practical application these factors are irrelevant. The weapons that railguns would be used against (armored vehicles, structures) are not significantly composed of fluid, so the projectile will just blow a clean hole through. The fact is that modern cannon, loaded with depleted uranium or tungsten penetrating ammunition, can shoot through just about any target; it becomes apparent that the expense and other impracticalities aren't worth it. If you really want to know the emergent new "super weapon," look up Thermobaric Devices aka Fuel Air Explosives. Many major powers (the United States and Russia being two that readily come to mind) are beginning to field the first practical weapons of this type. In a conventional (i.e. nonnuclear) explosive a fuel is combined with an oxidizing agent, and when an outside impetus is applied (heat, compression, or the like) the oxidizer binds with the fuel creating an exothermic reaction, which if vigorous enough we deem an "explosion". The oxidizer takes up a significant portion of the mass of such weapons. Thermobaric devices remove the oxidizing agent, and instead rely on the oxygen present in air to oxidize the fuel. This means that a Thermobaric device will be far more powerful for its mass than a conventional explosive. To understand why thermobarics are an emerging technology we must return to the older explosives. Conventional explosives contain an oxidizer because there just isn't enough atmospheric oxygen to sustain the reaction. The lump of fuel will react until it has used up the oxygen in the vicinity, and then extinguish after only partial consumption. By containing their own oxidizer conventional explosive are able to consume their entire reaction mass. Eventually someone came up with a clever idea. How about you take a bunch of fuel, and place a small conventional explosive charge in the middle of it. When this dispersal charge is detonated it throws the fuel as a particulate cloud into the air. Then, a fraction of a second later you fire an ignition charge to light all of the particulate fuel. Dispersing the fuel into the air exposes it to a greater quantity of oxygen, thus allowing complete reaction of all of the fuel mass. The end result: REALLY BIG BOOM! Thermobaric devices have been developed to the point that the largest models can rival the power of a small tactical nuclear warhead, i.e. they have a blast radius of dozens of meters. Wow, that was quite a bit of thread drift.

No, they approach it from the point of view of how good looking they can make adverts to sell the game, while maximizing profits by reducing work in other areas.

There probably needs to be a word cap. As said before: this is a review, not a summary.

What about Heckler and Koch?

Broke down my Marlin 39 and the firing pin popped out in two pieces. Inspected it further and found there was a burr on the chamber. I thought the legs on the firing pin were a stop, but evidently they are there to retract it when the gun is cycling. Swore a lot at that point.

That depends heavily on the environmental conditions. In many parts of the ocean away from river mouths and the like visibility is closer to 30 yards.

In GTA2 the antennas atop the TV Vans always point towards the church (save point).IIRC it costs $50,000 to save though.

Holy shit!

I have a good friend who is a metal fiend (and actually played in a couple of small metal bands) who says that the only differences between the genres are the subject matter of the lyrics and the time signature/tempo. Most metal music heavily rehashes chord progressions and even riffs.