Militaris

Europa Universalis II is a tough game. You get to play a country, and control its political, economic, and military actions through history. It is quite easy to become a 'super power' and win the game, especially if you start the game with a strong country (England, Spain, France, Austria). But it is neigh on impossible to control the entire planet which is the jewel in the crown.

One thing I would add, atleast locally the AM2 motherboards are significantly more expensive then the 939 alternatives. But I agree that it is differently worth looking at. The eVGA 7900GT KO is simply dripping with excellent value for money. I often wonder how eVGA can offer such amazing cards, and at the same time manage to undercut most other manufactuers. (I suspect due to their large OEM market that they filter out the best cores for their branded products something the smaller players can not do). The other excellent deal is the SAPPHIRE Radeon X850XT for only $90 you get a card which can compete with the 7600GT which costs $50 more (Although the OC 7600GT would easily win). The 7600GT does offer newer technology such as SM3 and HDR.

Was a bit bored, here are a few good deals I found on newegg. 7900GT eVGA 7900GT KO http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814130033 Good factory overclocked, free game, good warranty and only $245 after rebate. XFX 7900GT http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814150150 A few dollars less after rebate, slightly overclocked, good warranty. 7600gt eVGA 7600GT KO http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814130017 $140, Good factory overclocked, good warranty. Budget Cards SAPPHIRE Radeon X800GTO2 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814102675 $115.99, A excellent overclocker can unlock all 16 pipelines with a simple bios flash. Preformance simalar to a X850XT. GECUBE GC RX800GTO2-D3 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814241021 $70 after rebate, a great deal. From the looks of the specs, this card is slightly factory overclocked. Bundle would be nothing flash and Warranty would be nothing flash. Edit: I just been searching a bit more and have found the following. SAPPHIRE Radeon X850XT http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814102688 $90 after rebate. Would preform better then the 7600GT. A excellent buy.

Because I was bored I made a quick forum using a fairly typical free service. http://www.ezforums.org It provides a easy way to get a free forum up and running with most of the expected features and adverts which occur with free hosts. If you, or anyone want to play around with it you can use the test forum I created here. But then it only takes 10 seconds to make your own. http://www.ezforums.org/free/militaris Username: administrator Password: testforum

There are quite a few 'free' forum services around, which pretty much handles the hosting, software.... Although they can have heaps of advertisements. But for a small hobby forum, they are fine. So I suggest for your guild one of these would be the best option. There are better options around which gives you more controls and freedom. http://www.webwizguide.info Other options are vbulletin which is very good, but expensive, phpbb is popular, and hence a target for script kiddies. Invision Boards are pretty good.

Out of the above cards the 6800GS, 7600GT or the 7900GT are excellent cards for their price. Depending on the amount you have to spend I would choose one of these. Their is not much difference between the brands, same offer better bundles, warranties and different cooling systems. Out od ASUS or XFX, I would personally choose XFX but without knowing the exact product details the ASUS could be a better buy. There is also a nice recent review on mid-range cards on AnandTech. http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2812 A few quotes from the above "Not only is the X1900 GT a better performer in most cases than the stock 7900 GT, but with this week's price cuts the ATI part offers an incredible value advantage." "On the low end, we've got the stock 7600 GT for just over $160, which offers playable midrange performance at a low price. While the X1600 XT is about $15 cheaper, performance is abysmal. There is no reason anyone should purchase an X1600 XT at this point. With a really tight budget, the 7600 GT offers adequate gaming performance" and to steal their summary. $150 - $220: GeForce 7600 GT (stock) $230 - $280: Radeon X1900 GT $290 - $320: GeForce 7900 GT (overclocked 550/775 +) $320 - $370: Radeon X1900 XT .............................. Just to add a few more comments regarding the budget end cards. To quote from another Anandtech article. http://www.anandtech.com/guides/showdoc.aspx?i=2765&p=5 "Honestly, the vast majority of users are better off purchasing a midrange card, which in many instances are two or three times as fast as the budget offerings (sometimes more)." update After a bit of reading and comparing prices using newegg for the price, for a $80 card the Radeon X800GTO is the best buy. It is better then the 6600GT which is priced at a simalar amount. The 7600GS offers good prefrormance, but costs around $30 more then the previous cards. It is very simalar to the Radeon X1600XT. Prefromance wise they do not seem to have much on the X800GTO. So the X800GTO is the best buy if you do not want to spend $150-ish for a 7600GT (Can be gotten for $130-ish after rebates).

double post.

For the quiz, it said I was 23 years old, I am really 22 so quite accurate. Although, like others the answers did not fit me very well. Because I do not have anything better to do I provided answers to most of the questions below. Quite brutally honestly I hope. What's your current living situation? I currently live with my mum and dad, because I get free food, accommodation, washing done and it is close to work. If I really wanted to I could move out but why? An acquaintance tells you a very juicy secret about your best friend? Can you keep the secret? I would tell people if it suits me, it also greatly depends on the info I am told. I would probably tell my best friend just to cause a bit of conflict which might be funny. Your idea of a good party is: It would need to have good friends, limited music, probably would start with a wine tasting, but then as the night goes on we would slowly move onto tasting and drinking other kinds of liqueur. Towards the end of the night we would all be totally wasted, and I would probably end up vomiting in the garden. During one of our tastings, it is quite likely that a group of 4-5 would drink 20 or so bottles. But then... I also would enjoy just going straight to the whiskey or other spirits. Your ideal career is something like: Ummm, none of the following. My ideal career would have good pay, flexible hours with a short working week. Also must not be overly repetitive. I need to be kept interested. I would love to be a product reviewer for a living, not to sure about writing the reports. The last time you told a lie was when... I do not really tell lies, I often avoid questions. I might have claimed that I was sicker then I really was. I also make stuff up all the time, but that is just a joking conflict between my dad, sister and myself. You're having lunch with a few friends. After lunch you'll probably going to... Depends on what the others are doing, I would try and escape doing the dishes. The best rock band of all time is: I do not really prefer any music or style. How would you describe your political views? Define the terms you use? I would describe my economic views as liberal capitalists, while my social reviews are classical liberal.

I tried a different photo. This time I got the following http://www.myheritage.com/FP/photo.php? ... umID=98645 Quite a strange combination.

I uploaded a completly random photos (A piece of a speargun) and it did not find a face :( I then upload a photo of my pet goats face. Again could find nothing :( So I tried one of myself I got Robert Duvall (56%) Calvin Coolidge (55%) William Howard Taft (55%) Dane cook (54%) Fahd of Saudi Arabia (53%) Colin Firth (53%) David Livingstone (51%) Ayrton Senna (51%) Clara Bow (51%) (Female) Fairuza Balk (50%) (Female) Out of the above, I have no idea who any of them are. by looking at the photos, I look slightly like Colin Firth but that is mainly due to the hair style.

Like already said the main thing a forum needs to have is content and a good number of users.... With these two things even a horribly designed forum would be able to out compete much better ones. One site which has a horrible forum (in my eyes) is dpreview.com, but the site provides excellent content. The forum is flourishing despite its annoying format. (I can understand why they use the chosen format but I still find it annoying to navigate). A good free forum software package to use is http://www.simplemachines.org Advertisements in moderation are not a major problem. Most people can ignore them by now. Using a free service is fine to start with. There is not much point to spend serious money on a forum which is likely to fail. I have seen massive forums using free hosting plans. If you want a good forum, this is what you should do. Find a niche which had not be fulled by another forum/forums (being interested in that niche also helps). Then create a site around that topic. People who want info on that topic would visit there to get advice. With a lot of luck a community would develop, which would feed upon itself.

I am currently using around 30GB of a 80GB hard-drive. If I purchase a dSLR and take heaps of RAW photos I might need 1TB.... The other option, like several others is if I get a Tv tuner card and record heaps of shows. So maybe, but not currently.

At the moment top gear is the only show I regularly watch.

One of the best sites ever, always reviews a wide range of cool gadgets and materials. http://www.dansdata.com Easily the best thing ever to came out of aussie.

Jewelry can always be melted down and sold on the precious metal market, one of my mums necklaces has roughly doubled in price due to gold increasing in value . But, then as a investment it is much wiser to buy precious metal in bar form. One advantage of jewelry is that it can hold its value against inflation. But then, bar metal also holds its value, just looks less fancy. Might have a potential to be used to avoid gift duty taxes. It is smarter to spend large amounts of money on jewelry then expensive brand clothing which are mostly made out of relatively inexpensive materials. You can also buy 'golden' most items not just jewelry. This is rather pointless. http://www.tackletour.com/reviewicast06lures.html

The highest I can say for certain would be mt Riley at 1314m, although I have climbed mt Robert which is 1421m (But not sure if I was on the summit, was during a storm so had other things on my mind) Also climbed part of the way up a few other mountains, because I did not reach the peak my exact height is unknown. Edit Just found that Mt Patriarch was higher then the other two, it is 1656, but it was kind of cheating because we drove about halfway to the top and there was a dirt road 90% the way up. I suspect mt Riley would of been a higher climb. I have also climbed a good distance up mt aicken, peak 1858. Although, did not reach the peak due to not having the right equipment and leaving to late in the day. If you reached the summit it would be 2,797 metres (9,175 feet).

Meh, there is a simple solution to this. Just have a long tube which is connected to a large fuel tank on the ground.

Many of the top-gear stunts are staged... The burning of the caravan was differently, and the tent they broke was also placed there to be damaged. The races between Car + other are also staged, often filmed over a period of several weeks. But they are still great to watch.

I probably own heaps of stuff no one on here has. A couple of examples which I grabbed from around me. A irrigation TuffTap 16N and FishEye- Geographic IQ for Business. (well it was a freebie, someone might have it)

Oy_the_Great, you could not be more wrong. Firstly, unless a monopoly is more efficient then its competitors, it would not survive in a truly free market. Most monopolies have been caused by government regulations and protections. In a open market, eventually, due to the development of new technologies or smaller more efficient competitors, the monopoly market share would erode away. One good example is that many of the Telcos (often with government backing) controlled a physical monopoly over phone calls (Due to owning the wire networks). Due to the large capital cost of laying another wire network it was uneconomic for others to lay their own networks, and for a short while the monopolies flourished. (Although phones were never the only firm of communication, just the quickest which allowed them to charge for the service). Then came along, wireless technology, this allowed for a relatively inexpensive means to offer a phone service. In many countries, the large telco was slow to act, and have now loss large percentages of their market. A inefficent monopoly would simply not survive in a free market. A efficient monopoly would be a good thing.

Then they are not conservative...

Quite simply. Conservatives are against change, liberals are for increase freedoms. What you said weezcake is not entirely accurate. A liberal economic policy would support the deregulation of business, less government power, and lower taxes (Increase freedoms). While a pure conservative policy would change nothing and keep the status quo. In reality the terms are used all over the place (and often wrongly). Often socialist parties having liberal social policy but conservative economic policy. While, it is quite common for traditional 'right wing' (a term I hate) parties to have conservative social policy but a liberal economic policy. Globally there are a few 'pure' liberal parties. They are quite common in the old soviet states in eastern Europe where the populations have been forced to live under the intense regulations of the communist regimes. Now they want more freedoms.

That is most likely a error, either by pricespy software or the website choosing the wrong price. It happens on occasion.

The site below collects a good range of shop prices for cards. http://au.pricespy.biz/cat_16.html

and with luck you would never know. It has a horrible taste.