"Besides, you've seen how long it took them to agree on a standard for a charging plug. Just think how long it would take them to agree on standards for whole battery packs."
Once you have that standard, you are STUCK with it, and replacing that sort of equipment isn't like going from AT to ATX form-factors in disposable PCs.
Electric car development is still in its infancy. A great way to "knife the baby" would be too many standards too early in the game.
Yes. Really. I wouldn't want them if they were free. Waste of paper which I would have to haul off, not backlit, can't copy/paste or link to content, etc.
I'm certainly old enough to miss dead tree media. I don't, though I use junk snail mail to line the bottom of my bird cages.
They don't care, they will never care, and Photoshop is free off torrent sites so anyone not liking GIMP has an industry-standard home alternative. (Adobe, wisely understanding that "market chumming" maintains their product as standard, don't make it too difficult to pirate.)
Part of geek vanity is naming things a certain way. They coded it and it's THEIRS to do with as they like. It belongs to them.
All it takes is one motivated person with a Strela (or RPG if they are close enough, and you can't jam or spoof and RPG) who scores a hit in the right spot.
"educated guys have a freaking blast after retirement."
Fuck yes.
BTW, joining the military is a screaming deal. I'm retired after 26 years, debt-free, and with low overhead. "But people who join the military often have lower lifetime incomes that civilians!" No shit. If I don't feel like working, I don't have to. Beats "dying in harness" like an old plow mule any day.
We'll see honest politicians and world peace before we see standard notebook form-factors.
They are "planned obsolescence" almost perfected. If makers could conveniently use only proprietary RAM and hard disks, it would be vendor lock paradise.
If you have a (plentiful at Davis-Monthan etc) surplus ejection seat whose pyrotechnics are current all you need is to bolt the rails to the cockpit floor with a simple mount of your choice and cut a hole in the roof covered with a light panel. No electronics to connect and the seat is self-contained.
OV-10 Broncos had a very fast seat because it used a canopy breaker and punched through the light upper transparency.
What utter babble. EXPERIMENTS are "experimental". Go research the MANY experimental aircraft (the Smithsonian saved quite a few) which were built before the advent of convenient computer modelling.
They were built to TEST ideas. That's why the people who flew them were called "test pilots" instead of "foregone conclusion pilots". If you know your end result it's not an "experiment" nor is it "research".
"What DOES piss me off about the military is how many old choppers and warbirds we have wrapped in plastic out at the boneyard."
Worn-out high-time military birds would need expensive overhauls before civilian service, and replacement radios and avionics in many cases. Beware the "aircraft-shaped object" which LOOKS just dandy parked in the desert but needs overhaul before return to service. There's often structural deterioration you can only see on X-ray.
"Now if it is useful for parts then yes, i can see it, but frankly all those early to late 60s choppers and warbirds are so hopelessly out of date the military is never gonna want to fly those again and they would fetch a damned good price on the civilian market."
And dig beaucoup ditches when they came apart. Civilians don't have the money and support equipment to fly their own Phantoms etc. unless they are extremely rich. The vast majority of the sixties stuff was gone when I went to AMARC for Aircraft Battle Damage Repair training in the 1990s. (I'm retired USAF Comm/Nav, Engine troop, and later Crew Chief. Broncos, Phantoms, and F-16 A/B/C/D)
AMARC has historically had a pretty good return to the taxpayer, with aircraft and parts routinely going to civilian agencies. Retired airliners also go there to be cannibalised for parts to keep the tanker fleet going. The drone program has made good use of aging fighters in training and weapons testing.
"AMARC's return on investment is impressive. In FY02, the facility gave 99 aircraft valued at $520 million a new life, and it reclaimed $732.5 million worth of spare parts and placed them back into the active inventory. Thus, on an annual budget of $47 million, AMARC returned a total of $1.25 billion worth of equipment to the Department of Defense."
Slashdot Mirror
Everything is terrorism!
Think of the children!
Anything that makes three-phase more common and less expensive would be great.
"I don't see it as any more dangerous than large tanks of gasoline, or above-ground propane tanks and transformers and so on."
It's far LESS dangerous than gasoline or LP. Wiring them to code means appropriate circuit protection.
"Besides, you've seen how long it took them to agree on a standard for a charging plug. Just think how long it would take them to agree on standards for whole battery packs."
Once you have that standard, you are STUCK with it, and replacing that sort of equipment isn't like going from AT to ATX form-factors in disposable PCs.
Electric car development is still in its infancy. A great way to "knife the baby" would be too many standards too early in the game.
The Communists, who became Very Good at this sort of thing, used small "cells".
I'm anti-theist, and if they want to lean on this fellow for being an Islamist, he can leave Europe and move to one of his holy places.
Islam is currently the worst superstition, all superstition is indefensible, and I have ceased to care about the rights of Muslims.
I'm fair. I value them as little as they value my Infidel self.
"Is this FreeRepublic.com now?"
More like FarkRepublic....
There are so many people that original ideas are actually rare.
Remove the requirement for a doctoral thesis and instead use some other subject mastery demonstration.
Yes. Really. I wouldn't want them if they were free. Waste of paper which I would have to haul off, not backlit, can't copy/paste or link to content, etc.
I'm certainly old enough to miss dead tree media. I don't, though I use junk snail mail to line the bottom of my bird cages.
They don't care, they will never care, and Photoshop is free off torrent sites so anyone not liking GIMP has an industry-standard home alternative. (Adobe, wisely understanding that "market chumming" maintains their product as standard, don't make it too difficult to pirate.)
Part of geek vanity is naming things a certain way. They coded it and it's THEIRS to do with as they like. It belongs to them.
Because they (cue George Carlin voice) "don't give a fuck about you", or me, or nerds.
They want a mass market. That means copying familiar shittiness, and too bad about that.
Appropriate Carlin voice here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q
Fracture markets for vendor-lock win!
All it takes is one motivated person with a Strela (or RPG if they are close enough, and you can't jam or spoof and RPG) who scores a hit in the right spot.
If I made good money at a more comfortable schedule and didn't mind my job on those terms, why not consult or part-time?
"educated guys have a freaking blast after retirement."
Fuck yes.
BTW, joining the military is a screaming deal. I'm retired after 26 years, debt-free, and with low overhead. "But people who join the military often have lower lifetime incomes that civilians!" No shit. If I don't feel like working, I don't have to. Beats "dying in harness" like an old plow mule any day.
....using social networks is still vain and silly.
"Surface to Air missiles at the Olympics"
Easy enough to steal a smaller aircraft or helo for one determined to use it. Airliners aren't the only "found objects" one may hurl at the ground.
:-)
"Hopefully this becomes widespread enough to inject enough noise into the signal that is Facebook's personally-focused ad targetting."
Neat experiment. :)
6). The 747 can't stay airborne 24/7 and must undergo repair, maintenance, periodic inspections, etc which can require considerable hangar time.
It will NEVER be easy for the public because they do NOT install operating systems.
We'll see honest politicians and world peace before we see standard notebook form-factors.
They are "planned obsolescence" almost perfected. If makers could conveniently use only proprietary RAM and hard disks, it would be vendor lock paradise.
Embrace and extend...
WAY too much money.
If you have a (plentiful at Davis-Monthan etc) surplus ejection seat whose pyrotechnics are current all you need is to bolt the rails to the cockpit floor with a simple mount of your choice and cut a hole in the roof covered with a light panel. No electronics to connect and the seat is self-contained.
OV-10 Broncos had a very fast seat because it used a canopy breaker and punched through the light upper transparency.
Neat site with lots of interesting ejection info:
http://www.ejectionsite.com/seatgalnf.htm
What utter babble. EXPERIMENTS are "experimental". Go research the MANY experimental aircraft (the Smithsonian saved quite a few) which were built before the advent of convenient computer modelling.
They were built to TEST ideas. That's why the people who flew them were called "test pilots" instead of "foregone conclusion pilots". If you know your end result it's not an "experiment" nor is it "research".
"What DOES piss me off about the military is how many old choppers and warbirds we have wrapped in plastic out at the boneyard."
Worn-out high-time military birds would need expensive overhauls before civilian service, and replacement radios and avionics in many cases. Beware the "aircraft-shaped object" which LOOKS just dandy parked in the desert but needs overhaul before return to service. There's often structural deterioration you can only see on X-ray.
"Now if it is useful for parts then yes, i can see it, but frankly all those early to late 60s choppers and warbirds are so hopelessly out of date the military is never gonna want to fly those again and they would fetch a damned good price on the civilian market."
And dig beaucoup ditches when they came apart. Civilians don't have the money and support equipment to fly their own Phantoms etc. unless they are extremely rich. The vast majority of the sixties stuff was gone when I went to AMARC for Aircraft Battle Damage Repair training in the 1990s. (I'm retired USAF Comm/Nav, Engine troop, and later Crew Chief. Broncos, Phantoms, and F-16 A/B/C/D)
AMARC has historically had a pretty good return to the taxpayer, with aircraft and parts routinely going to civilian agencies. Retired airliners also go there to be cannibalised for parts to keep the tanker fleet going. The drone program has made good use of aging fighters in training and weapons testing.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/where-combat-planes-retire.html
"AMARC's return on investment is impressive. In FY02, the facility gave 99 aircraft valued at $520 million a new life, and it reclaimed $732.5 million worth of spare parts and placed them back into the active inventory. Thus, on an annual budget of $47 million, AMARC returned a total of $1.25 billion worth of equipment to the Department of Defense."