David Hingtgen

It was never just a no-fly-zone. It has been 'everything and anything short of ground forces' since the resolution was passed. That means tank-plinking and Wild Weasel missions a-plenty. US has yet to put a combat plane in the air, just cruise missile strikes and support planes.

Dutch and Danish jets have arrived in Italy.

Just FYI, but the UK is calling this Operation Ellamy, the US calls it Operation Odyssey Dawn.

Rafales are in Libya and striking tanks. Mirage 2000's also there. While there has been no air-to-air combat AFAIK, there is a MiG-23 down and a MiG-21 down. Certainly at least one of them is a rebel plane lost due to friendly fire from the rebels, but too much conflicting info to be sure. Recent surprising pic (given their stated stance) is Italian Tornados being loaded up with live HARMs. Canada's F-18s are in Scotland and getting ready to head to Sicily. RAF Tornados just left Scotland. Haven't heard anything on Spain's F-18s lately. Dutch/Belgian/Norwegian F-16s committed but no movement I've heard of. Heard a report of US F-15's leaving the UK, but nothing for the Navy.

Malta has said no to staging, only fly-over rights. Italy has opened their bases, but no actual forces committed AFAIK.

Well, everything's basically "on hold" at the moment. France still the vanguard though, ready and waiting.

How come I've seen cosplayers with much better-fitting boots and leggings?

Anyways, with the Libyan no-fly-zone+ imposed, just some interesting facts: You need SEAD, and lots of it--not necessarily top-of-the-line fighters for CAP. F-22 not really the best here (and it's a waste to send them against MiG-23's). Can't deny airspace unless you control it first and can fly around without fearing SAMs. Tornado GR4 and F-16 Block 50/52 are among the very best at this. Tank plinking would actually be quite useful, but could be a while before any A-10's get in-theater. I don't think Bentwater has had any for many years. Will probably fall to the Tornado and F-16 again. I'm not up on the Rafale or Typhoon's anti-tank weaponry. IMHO the most-likely "early situation" is Su-24 vs Shornet or Rafale. I won't be surprised if something's been shot down when I check the news in the morning. Here's what's currently in the area, US Navy-wise: Closest, on the Enterprise: VFA-11 Red Rippers F-18F VFA-136 Knighthawks F-18E VFA-211 Checkmates F-18F VMFA-251 Rhunderbolts F-18C Next closest, on the Carl Vinson: VFA-22 Redcocks F-18F VFA-25 Fist of the Fleet F-18C VFA-81 Sunliners F-18E VFA-113 Stingers F-18C Notably, the Sunliners got the Hornet's first kills in Desert Storm and they've been in combat in Libya before. Certainly "the squadron to watch". For the USAF, Aviano's F-16s would be the main, probably followed by Spangdahlem's. Both could do SEAD and CAP. Strike Eagles from RAF Lakenheath likely IMHO for non-SEAD strikes if needed. ::edit:: Ah, forgot, Spangdahlem has A-10's now too. Good, because it's a LONG way to Libya from Arizona...

No program gets everything. Since you have good cause to suspect something, I would go here and let it run this scan. http://www.pandasecu...ons/activescan/ Just say yes/agree/install to everything. Note that it will scan EVERY file and will take a while---I think 3 hours last time I ran it, maybe 180 gigs searched. But I have found it'll often find things others (AVG, Avast, Avira, MS) miss, even if it's as minor as a tracking cookie from an ad website. If it is a key logger, decent odds are it's specifically a root-kit, which are quite different from viruses and many scans won't find them easily. Google up a few root-kit detectors and see if they find anything. (note that there can often be some false positives, especially if you have anything with SecuROM on your PC) "Combofix" is also a good, powerful, all-purpose "find the hidden nasties" program. It'll find a lot of things others miss. Doesn't take long either. http://www.combofix.org/download.php There's always a lot of warnings associated with it, but I've never seen any issues. It will go DEEP into your OS/registry though, to the point that many other programs will consider what it does to be viral--but that's how it roots out things others miss.

Plus half-life. Many of the types of fallout being put out have half-lives of seconds/minutes/hours----it'd have decayed to nothingness by the time it even got here. The jetstream doesn't move at Mach 5. Sure if you're 5 minutes away it's an issue, but if you're days away from something with a 20-second half-life, it'll be down to nothing by the time it gets to you. At which point a Banana will be worse for you, radiation-wise. Something I just read---the majority of Iodine-129 (the worst fallout with the longest half-life a reactor can put out) in the world exists in the environment due to air-test nukes in the 40's/50's. Yup, it's been there your whole life, you just probably didn't know about it. I don't really think a .001% increase or whatever is going to do anything. Remember, the sun is pumping out far more radiation constantly, and the ozone isn't what it used to be---that exposes you to much more radiation, every day. Fear that, if you want to fear something. The reactors WILL be stopped at some point---but the sun's going to keep pumping out UVA through the ozone holes...

Anyone here still have access to the Tomcat sunset forums? If a Tomcat flew, they *would* know about it.

I read earlier today that there only ever really was one "lost" train, the others were mis-quotes etc. But it was found days ago, and everyone was killed. The only "good" news is that it was fairly small commuter train, and not a Shinkansen with hundreds and hundreds on board.

AFAIK every F-14 that's going to a museum, already went immediately upon retiring. There was bunch of them for a few months, then that was it. Every movement since has been on roads via tractor-trailer.

Go watch the "Jedi Rocks" song in SE ROTJ again and tell me it will be anything less than the most extremely gimmicky jumping-at-you 3D of all time.

Yeah, but a lot of places are fear-mongering on "5x normal" or "20x normal". Acting like 10x normal fallout with a 4-minute half-life could hit LA and mutate everyone...

Like 9 of 10 "spikes" the past few days have been short-lived, sometimes only minutes.

You'll get more radiation living next to a marble building.

Sure it wasn't a Luftwaffe Tornado visiting or something? I am unaware of (and frankly disbelieving) any F-14 having flown in the US in years. It's about as likely as seeing an SR-71. Anyways: Top 10 F-35B problems and fixes: http://www.flightglo...s-and.html#more

Is that recent? I can't remember which group or which disaster, but a couple of years ago I recall a big stink about when people donating for a disaster learned that the funds weren't "specific" and were going to be used in a "general fund".

Yeah, my VF-27 spends most of its time in fighter mode. If the joints aren't used, they don't loosen.

Playing DA 2. It's almost as if the side-quests ARE the main quests. (as in, the main quests are more of a "goal" with many side-quests that can be done in any order leading up to achieving that goal). Anyways---anyone figure out the "equipment icon color" thing? Most DLC has green icons and is of high quality, but I also have non-DLC green ones---and sometimes they're worse than my non-DLC equipment. Most stuff is white or red, but I have 2 weapons that have gold icons.

Not me. I distinctly got just the Black Emporium from the first code, fiddled around for a few minutes trying to get the Prince, then stupidly realized there was a back side to the sheet, then entered in another code---and got the prince. And there was a 3rd code for Bioware's site on the bottom of the sheet, that gave me the signature stuff. The Fade Shear was acquired this morning from the Amazon code. I didn't have to enter a code for the staff, it showed up weeks ago on my Bioware account.

I preordered mine from Amazon. And: 1. Got pre-order bonus code this morning. Typed it in, waited for game. Note, that's a pre-order bonus code, not the signature edition goodies. Works at bioware's website, not Live. 2. Game showed up around 3PM. Later I downloaded some DLC, typed in more codes on Live, downloaded more DLC. (mostly "bought game when new" goodies) 3. Went back online with PC, typed in more codes on other side of insert sheet. Went back online with 360, downloaded more goodies. (signature edition stuff) 4. Finished up DA: Awakenings this evening and replayed last half-hour for another achievement. NOW I'm ready to start DA2 but it's too late to really do much. Yes, if you pre-ordered a signature edition, you'll be typing in and downloading a lot. Half the stuff is activated at Bioware.com, half actually on Xbox Live.

Since it's on-topic: Any recent recommendations for a hosts file? Most of them are too aggressive IMHO and utterly block every ad-serving site there is, which will actually screw up navigating some websites--especially those that play an ad in front of a video. Is there a hosts file that is dedicated just to blocking malware/viruses, not malware+ads+tracking+everything else?