With the exception of helicopters, some VTOL / STOL aircraft, and some specialty aircraft that are just rugged (C-130s come to mind), what you said is true for ANY military aircraft.
"but when you think about it, to fly UAVs effectively you need a remote base (aka out of enemy range) to operate them from." can easily become "but when you think about it, to fly aircraft effectively you need a remote base (aka out of enemy range) to operate them from."
There's little practical difference. If the enemy bombs your command center and disables your ability to remotely control your UAVs, or the enemy bombs your runway and disables your ability to launch and land aircraft, you're still grounded.
That said, the idea that you need a "remote base" is not always true anyway. UAVs are operated by Forward Operating Base style improvised airstrips now. They even have small ones (think glorified RC helicopters with camera gear) that can be deployed and operated in the field by infantry units on the move to observe areas ahead.
This is to say nothing of automated UAVs, which I've not heard of existing yet, but let's face it, despite their inevitable weakness, will come some day. Pre-program a flight mission (bomb these targets, or patrol this area and challenge all aircraft for IFF, etc) then launch and let the onboard computer carry out the mission. No communication back to base needed.
Finally, remember from the Iranian's perspective. They have a lot of folks just in the region that are quite distrustful of them (and often for very good reasons!). Many Iraqis are distrustful because of mounting evidence that Iran has supported insurgents during the war, and tried to destabilize the already shaky government there. The Turks are distrustful of Iran for similar reasons involving the PKK, though Iran denies this, and helped to fight the PKK. This is to say nothing of Israel, who we all know is BFFs with Iran.
Just because this weapon system only represents a regional threat doesn't mean it's not a potentially serious one.
The GPS constellation is arranged so this should be impossible unless:
Satellites were broken
The device was junk
or it was being used incorrectly (for instance, without line of sight to the sky)
Although none of the satellites are in a direct polar orbit (this avoids occasional "bunching" of satellites, a problem encountered by a forerunner to GPS called "Transit".), the constellation is divided into six orbital planes at varying inclinations. There is nowhere on the surface of the Earth where fewer than four satellites should be visible at any one time.
It is true that the lack of a direct polar plane means that in polar regions the satellites will sit lower on the horizon than in regions that are closer to the equator (They'll never be directly overhead in Alaska). But if the device is capable, and it's being used properly, you WILL be able to use it in Alaska or anywhere.
There was a new Call of Duty demo available this weekend, Dawnville it was called, but now it's gone and you can't get it anymore. I popped back to the desktop for a bit at the LAN party I was at, apparently in the brief window the game was available, and had no trouble getting my hands on it - it's great, like the other one is great, at any rate that's not why I brought it up. The reason Gabe went over to Spokane at all was to show his Grandfather - a man who has never discussed his experience in World War II - the original Call of Duty demo, and talk to him about his reaction to it. I have to admit, there is a part of me that has always wanted authorization from that generation to play these games, set as they are in their private definition of hell.
I had a chance to listen to the tape of Gabe's interview with his granddad, and it's already harrowing. They touch on the new Vietnam games very briefly, and without going into much detail he wasn't crazy about the idea. My stepdad was in Vietnam, as I would imagine many dads were - step or otherwise. If he'll talk to me, and I wouldn't blame him if he didn't, but if he did, I'll ask him what it's like to have someone make a toy out of your best friend dying in a jungle.
I get lots of mail every week from people asking about the interview I conducted with my Grandpa regarding his experiences in WW II and his thoughts on war related games. I promise it's still coming. My schedule recently heated up a bit but I'm still trying to crack out this article for you guys. I'll be taking a short vacation to Spokane for Thanksgiving and I'm hoping I'll have some time to sneak off and get some of my thoughts typed out.
Then... nothing. for a very long time. I even emailed them a few months, perhaps a year later to ask what happened. Did I just miss the interview? I wasn't finding it in the site's search. I never got a reply.
I know that I promised you all an interview with my Grandpa a couple years back. I showed him a WWII game and then talked with him about hisexperiences and what he thought of kids playing these kinds of games. I've still got the entire thing on a cassette tape and I'm honestly ashamed that I haven't transcribed it yet. It's my goal for this week.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed. It was not a well conducted interview. I don't know what I was expecting. They're not journalists or historians, or authors. They're a comic artist and a humorist (although they are great at what they do, and I often marvel at their writing). The first half of the interview sounds like what you'd expect a 10 year old to ask on an interview for a school assignment. The three or four game related questions at the end just barely scratched the surface.
What really struck me was Tycho's quote "I'll ask him what it's like to have someone make a toy out of your best friend dying in a jungle". This is one of those situations where the question is a bit more powerful than any one literal answer you can expect to get.
There seems to me to be a line. Simulation vs Toy. One treats the subject more seriously, and the other uses the subject as a setting for yet another more technically impressive clone of Doo
But for Japan, I think you're thinking of the 1951 treaty where we limited their military. The treaty you're linking does indeed bind us into having a base in Japan, but it expired after 10 years in 1970. We're not bound by it anymore.
Japan is technically forbidden to maintain a military by Article 9 of it's Constitution, not the treaty I linked to. So you're partially correct there.
The treaty I linked to is still in effect though. It's the 1951 treaty expired after 10 years. The newer treaty of 1960 was signed when the original expired. Rather than just renewing the text of the original treaty, they created a newer one that had two expiration clauses:
ARTICLE X This Treaty shall remain in force until in the opinion of the Governments of the United States of America and Japan there shall have come into force such United Nations arrangements as will satisfactorily provide for the maintenance of international peace and security in the Japan area.
However, after the Treaty has been in force for ten years, either Party may give notice to the other Party of its intention to terminate the Treaty, in which case the Treaty shall terminate one year after such notice has been given.
So either the U.N. can take over security for the region, in which case, we can walk away, OR after 10 years, either us or the Japanese can give notice of our intention to terminate the treaty, and it will expire one year from that date.
So since it's been more than 10 years, we could terminate with one year notice. But because neither party has done so, the treaty is still in effect.
Well yeah. But what has that really gotten us? This is one of the reasons that the rest of the world sees us as bullies. This is why our military costs what it does. This is dangerously close of making us the "bad guy".
I'm not defending Global Reach. At least not the way it's been scaled up. Just trying to inform.
Case in point: There are 22 "Aircraft Carriers" in the world today. This includes the silly little ski-jump ramp carriers like the British and others use, and a Japanese Carrier that can only field helicopters.
In fact, I think the typical American has an idea of that a modern carrier is:
Nuclear Powered for near limitless duration at sea
Has catapults to get fixed wing, non-STOL, non VTOL aircraft into the air
Has arresting cables to recover non-STOL, non VTOL aircraft.
Has an angled deck to safely launch and recover aircraft simultaneously
12 of the 22 carriers on this list have these features. The French Carrier Charles de Gaulle is the only one of the 12 that's not American, and is far smaller than the 11 American Super Carriers.
Put another way: There are 11 carriers in the world. And another 11 super carriers. We have all 11 Super Carriers, and the rest of the world has the remaining 11 smaller ones (some of which are barely operational).
Once you've got four carriers, you've already doubled the number of your nearest competitor. Why does anyone need 11? With more under construction?
That said, to address your other point: I don't think it's the size of our forces that has the rest of the world seeing us as bullies. Our military was just as large in the 90s, through 2002. Nobody saw our participation in the Gulf War, Kosovo, or Somolia, as "bullying". Indeed, it was the philosophy of "Preemptive War" in Iraq in 2003 that seemed to sway world opinion. We attacked a sovereign nation, which was no threat to us, and of dubious threat to it's neighbors on flimsy, (later revealed to be fabricated) evidence. Eight years later we're still there. Nobody's going to stand up and defend Hussain, but this was probably not the way to go about deposing him.
So it's not the size of our forces that I'd say has the world seeing us as bullies, it's the use of those forces outside of
Much of it boils down to cold war thinking, and not re-thinking that strategy since the fall of the Soviet Union. Particularly Germany. The U.S. thoguht from the 1950s through the end of the 1980s that the next big war would be fought to repel a Soviet / Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe. And (then West) Germany was of course strategically important.
In Japan, we are obligated to stay by the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan. In a nutshell, the Japanese are limited by treaty in regards to what type of Military they are permitted to develop. To bridge the gap, and because it was once in our strategic interest, we base forces there to help protect Japan. You can argue that we protect them from China now, but I don't hear anyone claiming that China has been doing much saber rattling.
Also, all the bases we maintain it has to do with a policy called "Global Reach". It's the same reason we maintain so many Super Carriers. The idea is that we can have warplanes overhead within a few hours, and boots on the ground in a day or so anywhere on the globe that they're needed.
South Korea is different, and quite unique. First, remember that the Korean war never ended. There's just a cease fire. The war is still technically going on.
Second, The North continues to threaten the South. If there were no U.S. troops there, or if there were a small number of advisers in-country with little formal presence (say 400 troops) then if the North Koreans were to attack, that probably wouldn't really be enough to draw us into a shooting war with the North Koreans.
Now 40,000 troops aren't enough to make a huge difference in an all out assault by the North on the South. Not militarily. The ROK will either hold their ground or be overrun with or without those 40,000 troops. But the North knows they're there, and they know that attacking the South, which is "defended by" 40,000 U.S. troops, would have to draw the U.S. into the war. We could not ignore it.
The 40,000 troops in Korea are in effect, a trip wire. They serve as a deterrent against North Korean aggression. They say to the North "Make no mistake: we have far too much invested in this country to consider turning a blind eye toward your aggression". They ensure that the North Koreans don't make the same mistake with the South that Iraq made with Kuwait. I'd rather have 40,000 troops sitting to babysit a tense peace, than have to mobilize 500,000 troops to war (As was done for Kuwait) because it was left undefended.
Rachel Maddow made some interesting points on her week in Afghanistan a few weeks back. Some things I hadn't heard or read elsewhere.
1) The distribution of wealth is nonexistent in Afghanistan. All the war money is making a few Afghan nationals wealthy. There's a great clip of her walking with Richard Engel outside of these huge gaudy mansions. The mansions were all built by folks who got rich off of the war. Yet the streets outside them are unpaved, and there are trash heaps everywhere and open sewers. Government services are nonexistent even in this neighborhood full of mini-castles.
2) Although the war has dragged on, and we haven't made much progress since 2002 / 2003ish, much of the blame may lie in the fact that the U.S. was distracted by, and had vital resources diverted to Iraq. Much more progress in training the Afghans has apparently been made in the past year than the previous five years. Lots of mistakes were made in the prior years, in both training, counterinsurgency strategy, and general winning of hearts and minds.
The biggest question behind the second point is "is it too late now?". Let's assume for a minute that the folks Maddow talked to are right. We now have the secret sauce that eluded us for years under bush. We now know what to do in Afghanistan, where as before, we just hadn't figured it out yet. If we could go back in time and tell ourselves this plan in 2002, I'm sure this would be helpful. But that's not the case. We now have to implement this plan, not under a blank slate as we had in 2002, but in a country that's been occupied by us for 8+ years now. With all the bitterness and resentment that comes from all the mistakes we made in the past.
If we have the secret formula, can it work, or has the public opinion of the Afghan population turned so far as to be irreversible?
There's one more interesting thing, also from Richard Engel on Maddow's program. This is an exchange from October 9, 2009:
ENGEL: Eight years have passed, and I think you have to also compare this strategy, which was really--it's an old strategy but it was refined in the war in Iraq by General Petraeus. And it was a strategy of winning hearts and minds by protecting the people.
MADDOW: Right.
ENGEL: And General McChrystal often talks about protecting the people that should be the focus. Continue to kill bad guys, as the military likes to say, but try and convince the people that they should be fighting the enemies themselves.
MADDOW: Right.
ENGEL: And that--that happened in Iraq quite successfully. The big difference between Iraq and Afghanistan is that, in Iraq, there was a civil war and one side, the Sunni Arabs, found themselves on the losing side of the war and needed protection. They needed American help and they were very therefore receptive.
(CROSSTALK)
MADDOW: . sought it out.
ENGEL: They sought it out.
MADDOW: Yes.
ENGEL: It was--they were reaching out to the Americans and said, "Please help us. If you do, we will help you." So there was a deal that was arranged.
And when Gen. Petraeus arrived in Iraq with his extra 30,000 troops, he found and helped created a 100,000 strong militia that joined up with him to fight against al-Qaeda in that case because this militia felt it had no other choice, that it is better to sign up with the Americans than to lose the civil war in Iraq. It is not a comparable situation that you have in Afghanistan for a variety of reasons.
MADDOW: Well, there's no civil war.
ENGEL: There's no civil war. The Taliban generally don't bother and don't threaten the local population. So if you're - put yourself in the position of a U.S. platoon leader on the ground.
You go and knock on someone's house in southern Afghanistan or eastern Afghanistan, the most dangerous parts.
Around $10 - 13 / hr is / was typical for the in-store, line-level techs (the admins make less, sometimes a lot less).
Supervisors and in-home techs will usually make $15 - $17ish / hr.
The cap for their pay grade is / was $20 or $21 IIRC. But in practice, BBY is more likely to promote someone to management than pay them more than $17 or $18 in Geek Squad.
This info is a few years old (when minimum wage was in the $5 / hr range). I wouldn't be surprised if the figures were all about $1 higher now, but I don't know for sure.
So to answer your question: It is much better than minimum wage, though not nearly what a competent tech can make working in IT for a company, government or school.
Even if the pay's the same in your area, it's tough to imagine much of a worse IT job than Geek Squad. A typical store will have 6 - 20 techs. Murphy's law makes sure that when something goes wrong, it will never be the person responsible for it that has to explain it to an angry customer.
The end result is that BBY doesn't get to pick the top talent from the labor pool. Those who are smarter / more professional / more ethical / etc will of course look elsewhere.
I'm in no way saying that there aren't good people in Geek Squad, but there are a lot of folks that aren't because BBY doesn't pay enough to be picky.
This is very true, but also serves to prove dogsbreath's greater point.
The Jitterbug uses it's simplicity as a marketing feature. In other words, it uses that feature to distinguish itself itself from all the other cell phones on the market, which are far less friendly.
It's a very deliberate niche design that only occupies it's marketing niche by virtue of the fact that complexity is the overwhelming norm with cell phones.
I didn't say that they were the best you could get. I said they were probably the finest that could be purchased for the price .
NEC/Mitsubishi certainly makes some crazy displays. But you'll pay more for them than you will Apple's best offerings. NEC also makes some displays that are a lot cheaper than Apple's. And it shows.
Tubes are nice and all, but they do have their own flaws as well. First there's the analog vs. digital thing. There's the way the screen is painted, magnetic susceptibility . Most of these touch ultimately on one thing: Geometry.
With a matrix display (LCD, Plasma, or any other display with physical pixels) you don't have to worry about the geometry unless the device itself physically bends or warps.
With a CRT, it must be very, very finely adjusted. And little things can distort your hard work. NEC / Mitsubishi's higher end CRTs actually compensate for the Earth's magnetic field!
That said, I don't even see CRTs on NEC's web site any more. And when I did, I don't recall seeing any 30" widescreens.
If you were well informed, we could have a discussion on how there are other factors that make more of a difference than the coating on the screen (Anti-reflective (glossy) vs. Anti-glare (matte)). But to say that there are no advantages, and that "some idiot at Apple thought it looked cool) is blisteringly ignorant.
It's simple physics, and if you thought about what's involved in making a screen's coating anti-glare (matte) you'd realize why it *has* to distort the image.
Oh and by the way, Sony (and probably others as well) was using Anti-reflective (glossy) screen coatings at least as long as Apple (circa 1998). I don't think this was not some kind of Apple invention. Mostly because making a screen matte is actually an extra step. That said, the Apple Cinema Displays are probably the finest displays that can be purchased for the price. It's no coincidence that most of them have AR coatings. Just because most people don't understand the tech and think that a $400 Westinghouse with a terrible TN panel is "just as good" as Apple's LED backlit IPS panel offerings doesn't make it so.
Color gamut is probably more important than anti-reflective vs. anti-glare ("glossy" vs. "matte"). But that's not to say the screen coating makes no difference.
It's simple physics. When you put a coating on display that is supposed to scatter light rather than reflect it, it's going to scatter light coming through it as well, rather than letting it pass through unmolested. It's a trade off, and the price you pay is diminished clarity, brightness and vividness of color.
It's because they are more vivid. And sharper. That's not hyperbole. The coating that reduces glare also distorts your image. You can't get something for nothing, it's a trade off.
It's easier just to copy/paste an earlier rant I posted than to type everything all over again:
I can't speak for print artists, because I don't know much about that. But the "glossy" and "matte" that everyone talks about are actually called anti-reflective and anti-glare coatings, respectively.
Basically anti-glare (matte) coatings scatter the light that is reflected from outside light sources. The problem is that it also scatters the light coming *through* the coating from your screen. So images are less sharp, and colors less accurate.
If my explanation is unclear, the diagrams there should make it a lot easier to understand.
In either case, I would never choose anti-glare (matte) over anti-reflective (glossy) unless I knew I would be using the screen in an environment where there would be a high degree of distracting glare. the clarity, brightness, and brilliant color is just so much nicer, unless I *need* to prevent reflections.
Would the glossy display be distracting on a notebook used outside? Yes, probably. But 95% of my work is done on a desktop in a room where glare is not a problem. To answer the OP's question, "Yes. I do."
I'm not shocked though. Most people don't notice these things. It's kind of sad, but this is the same reason it's hard to find a non-TN LCD display. Every other tech (IPS, MVA, PVA, etc) has viewing angles around 178 degrees. 8 bit color, etc. TN is stuck at 6 bit, and 170 degree (often 160) viewing angles. Not to mention terrible color reproduction, color "banding", where because the viewing angles are so low you can often find yourself in a situation where a portion of the screen is on angle, and the rest is off angle, so the colors don't match even when the color displayed is perfectly uniform!
Why do people prefer TN? They're slightly cheaper, and 99% of consumers are too dense to notice these flaws. Once you do, you can't un-notice them, and it's impossible to go back.
Yeah, even Warcraft II (maybe even the original Warcraft? Can't remember) had cut scenes in the storyline in glorious grainy VGA. That's how they'd advance the "plot". Every once in a while the Orcs would roll out a catapult and blow something up.
I've got to join the chorus, and say that I too only play Starcraft for the single player.
I bought the original the week it launched, and Brood Wars soon after it came out. I've played the campaign mode for each dozens of times over the years. I *have* played online, but just don't find it that much fun. I like tying the strategy to a storyline.
I don't doubt that the mix of campaign players vs multiplayer players is close to 50/50 as another poster said.
Okay, so Lemmings isn't public domain. The owners may have turned a blind eye to DHTML Lemmings, and other small projects, but how do you expect to get approved for the Palm and Apple App Stores?
IIRC Psygnosis owns the rights to Lemmings. Also IIRC, Psygnosis is now owned by Sony. Unless Psygnosis was only the publisher for a third party I'm not aware of.
While that's an opinion, and as others have pointed out, a highly subjective one, you're missing some points.
1) You don't have play all of them for 7 hours, let alone 7 hours a day. If you buy 24 games, it's entirely possible that half or more of them will be played for less than 7 hours, and you could just play the best ones a lot. I know several people that buy all kinds of hype, will get games on launch day, not like them, and trade them in a few days later. These games probably don't get more than a few hours play, but other games in their library do.
2) You're also assuming that the 24 games purchased in the last three months were recently released, new titles. I still purchase NES, SNES, N64, Gamecube, and classic PC games on a regular basis. I'm sure I'm not alone in seeing a game that I always wanted to play, but never got around to, and picking it up when I have the chance.
Sadly, I don't have the time to play that many hours a day to dedicate to games, so many of the games I buy wind up collecting dust. Some day, though...
Admittedly, I'm not a sports fan. In fact, I find organized commercial sports kind of detestable.
But didn't sports fans get along just fine before cable? I seem to remember growing up in the 80s, and there were plenty of Mets and Yankees and Giants and Jets fans around here.
Is this just a case of there now being more available to fans than ever before, so nobody would ever want to go back?
While half the sites that require registration, don't actually have much of a valid reason for people to register, save for the owner hoping to get your email address for their mailing list, I would still rather create a unique logon than use facebook.
I don't like facebook, myspace, aol, etc. I have accounts, technically, but they leave a bad taste in my mouth.
Nintendo couldn't do that if they wanted to (not alone anyway). They don't even own the rights to half the characters (Contra is Konomi, as is Simon Belmont. Mega Man is Capcom...)
That's a very simple thing to do, of course. But what I'd like to know is does Google (or anyone, really) do something else?
Say you're you. You're into OSS. So naturally many of your search terms are going to be for OSS projects. And a disproportionally high number of your click throughs on those searches will be to OSS related pages.
Now say that you now search for a new OSS project. One that the search engine has not seen you search for before. Let's also assume that this project is a common English word. Will it present the OSS project page(s) higher in it's results because it's made the logical leaps of: 1) This guy likes OSS! 2) This term is an OSS project! 3) Ergo, he may be looking for this OSS project, even though he hasn't before. Let me present those results higher.
Can anyone confirm (or debunk) that this behavior exists in the wild?
That is an important oversight. Not sure how I missed that one, but thanks for pointing it out.
I do agree that it would be nice to see Smithsonian get one of the operational orbiters, then pass Enterprise along to another museum.
My only gripe with your choices are that Huntsville, Kennedy and D.C. aren't *that* far apart. Some people live within a day's drive of all three, and other people in the U.S. (West Coast especially) live thousands of miles from all three. I'd really like to see one East Coast, one West Coast, and one centrally located. It also makes sense to me to put them either in *ma3jor* aerospace-related tourist destinations (like Kennedy Space Center), or in major population centers like Washington D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc.
Chicago or Houston are the only locations that make sense to me for central locations. DC or Kennedy would be obvious choices for East Coast, but I'm not just sure about West Coast locations. Huntsville is an important and interesting site, but it's not a terribly large population center, nor does it have the Mecca-like draw for space buffs that Kennedy does. It also has the "Dummy Shuttle" Pathfinder, which obviously is not as big a deal as having a real shuttle, I feel it would none the less be unfair for one facility to have both Pathfinder and a real orbiter.
AS-202 Command Module - USS Hornet, Alameda, California Hornet seems like a poor choice for many of the same reasons as Intrepid. Also, Hornet is really a ship who's legacy is forever tied to Apollo, not the shuttle program. It's appropriate to have an Apollo Command Module prototype there, but I think it's worth noting that the module there never flew. It probably has a lot to do with the facilities capabilities (or lack there of).
Apollo-Soyuz Command Module - California Science Center, Los Angeles, California I've been to the California Science Center in Los Angeles. I recall it was a very nice facility, but that the Air and Space gallery was also very small. They have an A-12 (forerunner to the SR-71 Blackbird), but it's outdoors.
Apollo 9 Command Module Gumdrop - San Diego Air & Space Museum, San Diego, California I've not been to the San Diego Air & Space Museum, but looking over their web site, it appears to be a great facility. First, it's a dedicated air & space museum, not just a small wing in a general science or history museum. Second, it has the majority of it's exhibits in doors, including a PBY-5A Catalina. The Catalina has a length of 63 ft 10 7/16 in (19.46 m), a wingspan of 104 ft 0 in (31.70 m), and a height of 21 ft 1 in (6.15 m). It's smaller than an orbiter, but not by a lot. The floor plan suggests there could be room as well. The only document I can find (PDF) that include the building's height suggest that it's 90 ft high, which would accommodate the Shuttle's 60 ft too. All and all, I think San Diego is the only West Coast facility that makes sense at all.
Central locations
Apollo 7 Command Module - Frontiers of Flight Museum, Dallas, Texas Looking over their web site, the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas, TX seems too small, not well organized enough, or well funded enough to house something like a Shuttle Orbiter. It seems to me that it's a fine facility, just too small scale. Unfortunately, I couldn't find solid numbers, just photos.
Agreed. The Intrepid is a great museum, and one of my favorite places in the world. But it's very specifically a museum of durable things. Military aircraft and supersonic transports that are designed for all-weather.
The Space Shuttle is the very definition of a Hangar Queen. It takes tens of thousands of man hours of re-fitting for each flight. The tiles are delicate, and it's not really designed to be exposed to the elements long term. It might be able to be, but given it's track record, do we really want to risk it when there are only three remaining in existence?
Yes, they probably *could* get it into the hangar bay of the Intrepid, but given the shuttle's size, they may actually have to dismantle the ship to do so.
In other words, the orbiter weighs in (empty) at triple the capacity of the Intrepid's elevators. Even if they didn't use the elevators and used some kind of crane instead, it's still 78.06 ft on it's smaller dimension vs the deck opening's larger dimension which is 60 ft.
They'd have to dismantle either the Intrepid or the orbiter to get it inside. Even if they did, the hangar deck is hardly climate controlled to begin with...
To use the Intrepid site, they'd either have to dismantle part of the ship to get it inside, then extensively retrofit it to provide a climate controlled environment, or they'd have to build a new facility on the Pier along side Intrepid just to house the Shuttle. The Intrepid gets most of it's operating budget from admissions, memberships, and the occasional grant. I don't think it's going to go away tomorrow, but I do get the distinct impression that compared to the Smithsonian, or the Kennedy Space Center (both government funded), it's hanging on my the margins.
The 500 year rule makes sense to me. These are invaluable pieces of human history. The Apollo Command Modules are in the same class. The National Air And Space Museum in D.C. makes sense as a location for one. They already have the Columbia module from Apollo 11, which I assume we would want to maintain to the same standards. However, they also already have the orbiter prototype Enterprise, so it seems to make more sense to spread the three remaining orbiters to allow as many people as possible to have access to them as possible. Perhaps one one at Kennedy Space Center, and one in Houston, and one on the West Coast somewhere?
New York City would allow millions of people to have access. And Intrepid is the premier aerospace site in the city. But it's just not equipped or funded for something like this.
Likewise Vandenberg Air Force Base in California could be a great site, as it was almost a second launch site for the Shuttle. Having an orbiter wind up there permanently could be very apropos. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any museum or public exhibit at Vandenberg, which is a shame. Edwards Air Force Base (Secondary shuttle landing site) and White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico could be appropriate for similar reasons. But again, they're both military bases, and not terribl
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That's true-ish, but kind of misses the point.
With the exception of helicopters, some VTOL / STOL aircraft, and some specialty aircraft that are just rugged (C-130s come to mind), what you said is true for ANY military aircraft.
"but when you think about it, to fly UAVs effectively you need a remote base (aka out of enemy range) to operate them from."
can easily become
"but when you think about it, to fly aircraft effectively you need a remote base (aka out of enemy range) to operate them from."
There's little practical difference. If the enemy bombs your command center and disables your ability to remotely control your UAVs, or the enemy bombs your runway and disables your ability to launch and land aircraft, you're still grounded.
That said, the idea that you need a "remote base" is not always true anyway. UAVs are operated by Forward Operating Base style improvised airstrips now. They even have small ones (think glorified RC helicopters with camera gear) that can be deployed and operated in the field by infantry units on the move to observe areas ahead.
This is to say nothing of automated UAVs, which I've not heard of existing yet, but let's face it, despite their inevitable weakness, will come some day. Pre-program a flight mission (bomb these targets, or patrol this area and challenge all aircraft for IFF, etc) then launch and let the onboard computer carry out the mission. No communication back to base needed.
Finally, remember from the Iranian's perspective. They have a lot of folks just in the region that are quite distrustful of them (and often for very good reasons!). Many Iraqis are distrustful because of mounting evidence that Iran has supported insurgents during the war, and tried to destabilize the already shaky government there. The Turks are distrustful of Iran for similar reasons involving the PKK, though Iran denies this, and helped to fight the PKK. This is to say nothing of Israel, who we all know is BFFs with Iran.
Just because this weapon system only represents a regional threat doesn't mean it's not a potentially serious one.
This is incorrect.
The GPS constellation is arranged so this should be impossible unless:
Although none of the satellites are in a direct polar orbit (this avoids occasional "bunching" of satellites, a problem encountered by a forerunner to GPS called "Transit".), the constellation is divided into six orbital planes at varying inclinations. There is nowhere on the surface of the Earth where fewer than four satellites should be visible at any one time.
It is true that the lack of a direct polar plane means that in polar regions the satellites will sit lower on the horizon than in regions that are closer to the equator (They'll never be directly overhead in Alaska). But if the device is capable, and it's being used properly, you WILL be able to use it in Alaska or anywhere.
Read up in it if you're skeptical:
http://home.earthlink.net/~fjolles/gps.htm
http://www.kowoma.de/en/gps/orbits.htm
http://www.colorado.edu/geography/gcraft/notes/gps/gps_f.html
The folks at Penny Arcade toyed with this idea a little bit. Bear with me here, it's a long walk to get to my point.
October 13 2003, Tycho posts:
Then, on October 15 2003, Tycho posts again:
Nothing for a while, then on November 24, 2003, Gabe posts:
Then... nothing. for a very long time. I even emailed them a few months, perhaps a year later to ask what happened. Did I just miss the interview? I wasn't finding it in the site's search. I never got a reply.
On December 3, 2007, Gabe partially answered my question with this post:
To make a long story slightly shorter, here's the interview.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed. It was not a well conducted interview. I don't know what I was expecting. They're not journalists or historians, or authors. They're a comic artist and a humorist (although they are great at what they do, and I often marvel at their writing). The first half of the interview sounds like what you'd expect a 10 year old to ask on an interview for a school assignment. The three or four game related questions at the end just barely scratched the surface.
What really struck me was Tycho's quote "I'll ask him what it's like to have someone make a toy out of your best friend dying in a jungle". This is one of those situations where the question is a bit more powerful than any one literal answer you can expect to get.
There seems to me to be a line. Simulation vs Toy. One treats the subject more seriously, and the other uses the subject as a setting for yet another more technically impressive clone of Doo
Japan is technically forbidden to maintain a military by Article 9 of it's Constitution, not the treaty I linked to. So you're partially correct there.
The treaty I linked to is still in effect though. It's the 1951 treaty expired after 10 years. The newer treaty of 1960 was signed when the original expired. Rather than just renewing the text of the original treaty, they created a newer one that had two expiration clauses:
So either the U.N. can take over security for the region, in which case, we can walk away, OR after 10 years, either us or the Japanese can give notice of our intention to terminate the treaty, and it will expire one year from that date.
So since it's been more than 10 years, we could terminate with one year notice. But because neither party has done so, the treaty is still in effect.
I'm not defending Global Reach. At least not the way it's been scaled up. Just trying to inform.
Case in point: There are 22 "Aircraft Carriers" in the world today. This includes the silly little ski-jump ramp carriers like the British and others use, and a Japanese Carrier that can only field helicopters.
In fact, I think the typical American has an idea of that a modern carrier is:
12 of the 22 carriers on this list have these features. The French Carrier Charles de Gaulle is the only one of the 12 that's not American, and is far smaller than the 11 American Super Carriers.
Put another way: There are 11 carriers in the world. And another 11 super carriers. We have all 11 Super Carriers, and the rest of the world has the remaining 11 smaller ones (some of which are barely operational).
Once you've got four carriers, you've already doubled the number of your nearest competitor. Why does anyone need 11? With more under construction?
That said, to address your other point: I don't think it's the size of our forces that has the rest of the world seeing us as bullies. Our military was just as large in the 90s, through 2002. Nobody saw our participation in the Gulf War, Kosovo, or Somolia, as "bullying". Indeed, it was the philosophy of "Preemptive War" in Iraq in 2003 that seemed to sway world opinion. We attacked a sovereign nation, which was no threat to us, and of dubious threat to it's neighbors on flimsy, (later revealed to be fabricated) evidence. Eight years later we're still there. Nobody's going to stand up and defend Hussain, but this was probably not the way to go about deposing him.
So it's not the size of our forces that I'd say has the world seeing us as bullies, it's the use of those forces outside of
Much of it boils down to cold war thinking, and not re-thinking that strategy since the fall of the Soviet Union. Particularly Germany. The U.S. thoguht from the 1950s through the end of the 1980s that the next big war would be fought to repel a Soviet / Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe. And (then West) Germany was of course strategically important.
In Japan, we are obligated to stay by the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan. In a nutshell, the Japanese are limited by treaty in regards to what type of Military they are permitted to develop. To bridge the gap, and because it was once in our strategic interest, we base forces there to help protect Japan. You can argue that we protect them from China now, but I don't hear anyone claiming that China has been doing much saber rattling.
Also, all the bases we maintain it has to do with a policy called "Global Reach". It's the same reason we maintain so many Super Carriers. The idea is that we can have warplanes overhead within a few hours, and boots on the ground in a day or so anywhere on the globe that they're needed.
South Korea is different, and quite unique. First, remember that the Korean war never ended. There's just a cease fire. The war is still technically going on.
Second, The North continues to threaten the South. If there were no U.S. troops there, or if there were a small number of advisers in-country with little formal presence (say 400 troops) then if the North Koreans were to attack, that probably wouldn't really be enough to draw us into a shooting war with the North Koreans.
Now 40,000 troops aren't enough to make a huge difference in an all out assault by the North on the South. Not militarily. The ROK will either hold their ground or be overrun with or without those 40,000 troops. But the North knows they're there, and they know that attacking the South, which is "defended by" 40,000 U.S. troops, would have to draw the U.S. into the war. We could not ignore it.
The 40,000 troops in Korea are in effect, a trip wire. They serve as a deterrent against North Korean aggression. They say to the North "Make no mistake: we have far too much invested in this country to consider turning a blind eye toward your aggression". They ensure that the North Koreans don't make the same mistake with the South that Iraq made with Kuwait. I'd rather have 40,000 troops sitting to babysit a tense peace, than have to mobilize 500,000 troops to war (As was done for Kuwait) because it was left undefended.
Rachel Maddow made some interesting points on her week in Afghanistan a few weeks back. Some things I hadn't heard or read elsewhere.
1) The distribution of wealth is nonexistent in Afghanistan. All the war money is making a few Afghan nationals wealthy. There's a great clip of her walking with Richard Engel outside of these huge gaudy mansions. The mansions were all built by folks who got rich off of the war. Yet the streets outside them are unpaved, and there are trash heaps everywhere and open sewers. Government services are nonexistent even in this neighborhood full of mini-castles.
2) Although the war has dragged on, and we haven't made much progress since 2002 / 2003ish, much of the blame may lie in the fact that the U.S. was distracted by, and had vital resources diverted to Iraq. Much more progress in training the Afghans has apparently been made in the past year than the previous five years. Lots of mistakes were made in the prior years, in both training, counterinsurgency strategy, and general winning of hearts and minds.
The biggest question behind the second point is "is it too late now?". Let's assume for a minute that the folks Maddow talked to are right. We now have the secret sauce that eluded us for years under bush. We now know what to do in Afghanistan, where as before, we just hadn't figured it out yet. If we could go back in time and tell ourselves this plan in 2002, I'm sure this would be helpful. But that's not the case. We now have to implement this plan, not under a blank slate as we had in 2002, but in a country that's been occupied by us for 8+ years now. With all the bitterness and resentment that comes from all the mistakes we made in the past.
If we have the secret formula, can it work, or has the public opinion of the Afghan population turned so far as to be irreversible?
There's one more interesting thing, also from Richard Engel on Maddow's program. This is an exchange from October 9, 2009:
Around $10 - 13 / hr is / was typical for the in-store, line-level techs (the admins make less, sometimes a lot less).
Supervisors and in-home techs will usually make $15 - $17ish / hr.
The cap for their pay grade is / was $20 or $21 IIRC. But in practice, BBY is more likely to promote someone to management than pay them more than $17 or $18 in Geek Squad.
This info is a few years old (when minimum wage was in the $5 / hr range). I wouldn't be surprised if the figures were all about $1 higher now, but I don't know for sure.
So to answer your question: It is much better than minimum wage, though not nearly what a competent tech can make working in IT for a company, government or school.
Even if the pay's the same in your area, it's tough to imagine much of a worse IT job than Geek Squad. A typical store will have 6 - 20 techs. Murphy's law makes sure that when something goes wrong, it will never be the person responsible for it that has to explain it to an angry customer.
The end result is that BBY doesn't get to pick the top talent from the labor pool. Those who are smarter / more professional / more ethical / etc will of course look elsewhere.
I'm in no way saying that there aren't good people in Geek Squad, but there are a lot of folks that aren't because BBY doesn't pay enough to be picky.
This is very true, but also serves to prove dogsbreath's greater point.
The Jitterbug uses it's simplicity as a marketing feature. In other words, it uses that feature to distinguish itself itself from all the other cell phones on the market, which are far less friendly.
It's a very deliberate niche design that only occupies it's marketing niche by virtue of the fact that complexity is the overwhelming norm with cell phones.
I didn't say that they were the best you could get. I said they were probably the finest that could be purchased for the price .
NEC/Mitsubishi certainly makes some crazy displays. But you'll pay more for them than you will Apple's best offerings. NEC also makes some displays that are a lot cheaper than Apple's. And it shows.
Tubes are nice and all, but they do have their own flaws as well. First there's the analog vs. digital thing. There's the way the screen is painted, magnetic susceptibility . Most of these touch ultimately on one thing: Geometry.
With a matrix display (LCD, Plasma, or any other display with physical pixels) you don't have to worry about the geometry unless the device itself physically bends or warps.
With a CRT, it must be very, very finely adjusted. And little things can distort your hard work. NEC / Mitsubishi's higher end CRTs actually compensate for the Earth's magnetic field!
That said, I don't even see CRTs on NEC's web site any more. And when I did, I don't recall seeing any 30" widescreens.
No. You are wrong.
If you were well informed, we could have a discussion on how there are other factors that make more of a difference than the coating on the screen (Anti-reflective (glossy) vs. Anti-glare (matte)). But to say that there are no advantages, and that "some idiot at Apple thought it looked cool) is blisteringly ignorant.
It's simple physics, and if you thought about what's involved in making a screen's coating anti-glare (matte) you'd realize why it *has* to distort the image.
You can read more about it here:
http://www.screentekinc.com/pixelbright-lcds.shtml#anti-glare
Educate yourself.
Oh and by the way, Sony (and probably others as well) was using Anti-reflective (glossy) screen coatings at least as long as Apple (circa 1998). I don't think this was not some kind of Apple invention. Mostly because making a screen matte is actually an extra step. That said, the Apple Cinema Displays are probably the finest displays that can be purchased for the price. It's no coincidence that most of them have AR coatings. Just because most people don't understand the tech and think that a $400 Westinghouse with a terrible TN panel is "just as good" as Apple's LED backlit IPS panel offerings doesn't make it so.
Color gamut is probably more important than anti-reflective vs. anti-glare ("glossy" vs. "matte"). But that's not to say the screen coating makes no difference.
It's simple physics. When you put a coating on display that is supposed to scatter light rather than reflect it, it's going to scatter light coming through it as well, rather than letting it pass through unmolested. It's a trade off, and the price you pay is diminished clarity, brightness and vividness of color.
http://www.screentekinc.com/pixelbright-lcds.shtml#anti-glare
It's because they are more vivid. And sharper. That's not hyperbole. The coating that reduces glare also distorts your image. You can't get something for nothing, it's a trade off.
It's easier just to copy/paste an earlier rant I posted than to type everything all over again:
Would the glossy display be distracting on a notebook used outside? Yes, probably. But 95% of my work is done on a desktop in a room where glare is not a problem. To answer the OP's question, "Yes. I do."
I'm not shocked though. Most people don't notice these things. It's kind of sad, but this is the same reason it's hard to find a non-TN LCD display. Every other tech (IPS, MVA, PVA, etc) has viewing angles around 178 degrees. 8 bit color, etc. TN is stuck at 6 bit, and 170 degree (often 160) viewing angles. Not to mention terrible color reproduction, color "banding", where because the viewing angles are so low you can often find yourself in a situation where a portion of the screen is on angle, and the rest is off angle, so the colors don't match even when the color displayed is perfectly uniform!
Why do people prefer TN? They're slightly cheaper, and 99% of consumers are too dense to notice these flaws. Once you do, you can't un-notice them, and it's impossible to go back.
Yeah, even Warcraft II (maybe even the original Warcraft? Can't remember) had cut scenes in the storyline in glorious grainy VGA. That's how they'd advance the "plot". Every once in a while the Orcs would roll out a catapult and blow something up.
I've got to join the chorus, and say that I too only play Starcraft for the single player.
I bought the original the week it launched, and Brood Wars soon after it came out. I've played the campaign mode for each dozens of times over the years. I *have* played online, but just don't find it that much fun. I like tying the strategy to a storyline.
I don't doubt that the mix of campaign players vs multiplayer players is close to 50/50 as another poster said.
But he's doing both of those things. Am I grossly misunderstanding the article? The summary? Did you read either?
Okay, so Lemmings isn't public domain. The owners may have turned a blind eye to DHTML Lemmings, and other small projects, but how do you expect to get approved for the Palm and Apple App Stores?
IIRC Psygnosis owns the rights to Lemmings. Also IIRC, Psygnosis is now owned by Sony. Unless Psygnosis was only the publisher for a third party I'm not aware of.
Good luck with that.
While that's an opinion, and as others have pointed out, a highly subjective one, you're missing some points.
1) You don't have play all of them for 7 hours, let alone 7 hours a day. If you buy 24 games, it's entirely possible that half or more of them will be played for less than 7 hours, and you could just play the best ones a lot. I know several people that buy all kinds of hype, will get games on launch day, not like them, and trade them in a few days later. These games probably don't get more than a few hours play, but other games in their library do.
2) You're also assuming that the 24 games purchased in the last three months were recently released, new titles. I still purchase NES, SNES, N64, Gamecube, and classic PC games on a regular basis. I'm sure I'm not alone in seeing a game that I always wanted to play, but never got around to, and picking it up when I have the chance.
Sadly, I don't have the time to play that many hours a day to dedicate to games, so many of the games I buy wind up collecting dust. Some day, though...
Admittedly, I'm not a sports fan. In fact, I find organized commercial sports kind of detestable.
But didn't sports fans get along just fine before cable? I seem to remember growing up in the 80s, and there were plenty of Mets and Yankees and Giants and Jets fans around here.
Is this just a case of there now being more available to fans than ever before, so nobody would ever want to go back?
I partially agree.
While half the sites that require registration, don't actually have much of a valid reason for people to register, save for the owner hoping to get your email address for their mailing list, I would still rather create a unique logon than use facebook.
I don't like facebook, myspace, aol, etc. I have accounts, technically, but they leave a bad taste in my mouth.
For me:
No login > Unique login > Facebook
Because you don't own Apple-approved hardware to run it on, but you want (legal) BSD anyway?
Dear both of you,
Nintendo couldn't do that if they wanted to (not alone anyway). They don't even own the rights to half the characters (Contra is Konomi, as is Simon Belmont. Mega Man is Capcom...)
That's a very simple thing to do, of course. But what I'd like to know is does Google (or anyone, really) do something else?
Say you're you. You're into OSS. So naturally many of your search terms are going to be for OSS projects. And a disproportionally high number of your click throughs on those searches will be to OSS related pages.
Now say that you now search for a new OSS project. One that the search engine has not seen you search for before. Let's also assume that this project is a common English word. Will it present the OSS project page(s) higher in it's results because it's made the logical leaps of:
1) This guy likes OSS!
2) This term is an OSS project!
3) Ergo, he may be looking for this OSS project, even though he hasn't before. Let me present those results higher.
Can anyone confirm (or debunk) that this behavior exists in the wild?
That is an important oversight. Not sure how I missed that one, but thanks for pointing it out.
I do agree that it would be nice to see Smithsonian get one of the operational orbiters, then pass Enterprise along to another museum.
My only gripe with your choices are that Huntsville, Kennedy and D.C. aren't *that* far apart. Some people live within a day's drive of all three, and other people in the U.S. (West Coast especially) live thousands of miles from all three. I'd really like to see one East Coast, one West Coast, and one centrally located. It also makes sense to me to put them either in *ma3jor* aerospace-related tourist destinations (like Kennedy Space Center), or in major population centers like Washington D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc.
Chicago or Houston are the only locations that make sense to me for central locations. DC or Kennedy would be obvious choices for East Coast, but I'm not just sure about West Coast locations. Huntsville is an important and interesting site, but it's not a terribly large population center, nor does it have the Mecca-like draw for space buffs that Kennedy does. It also has the "Dummy Shuttle" Pathfinder, which obviously is not as big a deal as having a real shuttle, I feel it would none the less be unfair for one facility to have both Pathfinder and a real orbiter.
If I had to plan it, I'd start with the list of locations of the Apollo Command Modules.
West Coast locations
Hornet seems like a poor choice for many of the same reasons as Intrepid. Also, Hornet is really a ship who's legacy is forever tied to Apollo, not the shuttle program. It's appropriate to have an Apollo Command Module prototype there, but I think it's worth noting that the module there never flew. It probably has a lot to do with the facilities capabilities (or lack there of).
I've been to the California Science Center in Los Angeles. I recall it was a very nice facility, but that the Air and Space gallery was also very small. They have an A-12 (forerunner to the SR-71 Blackbird), but it's outdoors.
I've not been to the San Diego Air & Space Museum, but looking over their web site, it appears to be a great facility. First, it's a dedicated air & space museum, not just a small wing in a general science or history museum. Second, it has the majority of it's exhibits in doors, including a PBY-5A Catalina. The Catalina has a length of 63 ft 10 7/16 in (19.46 m), a wingspan of 104 ft 0 in (31.70 m), and a height of 21 ft 1 in (6.15 m). It's smaller than an orbiter, but not by a lot. The floor plan suggests there could be room as well. The only document I can find (PDF) that include the building's height suggest that it's 90 ft high, which would accommodate the Shuttle's 60 ft too. All and all, I think San Diego is the only West Coast facility that makes sense at all.
Central locations
Looking over their web site, the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas, TX seems too small, not well organized enough, or well funded enough to house something like a Shuttle Orbiter. It seems to me that it's a fine facility, just too small scale. Unfortunately, I couldn't find solid numbers, just photos.
Agreed. The Intrepid is a great museum, and one of my favorite places in the world. But it's very specifically a museum of durable things. Military aircraft and supersonic transports that are designed for all-weather.
The Space Shuttle is the very definition of a Hangar Queen. It takes tens of thousands of man hours of re-fitting for each flight. The tiles are delicate, and it's not really designed to be exposed to the elements long term. It might be able to be, but given it's track record, do we really want to risk it when there are only three remaining in existence?
Yes, they probably *could* get it into the hangar bay of the Intrepid, but given the shuttle's size, they may actually have to dismantle the ship to do so.
The Essex Class carrier has a deck elevator with dimensions of 60 ft x 34 ft. It's maximum load weight was 40,000 Lbs. The shuttle orbiter by comparison is 122.17 ft by 78.06 ft and weighs 151,205 lb.
In other words, the orbiter weighs in (empty) at triple the capacity of the Intrepid's elevators. Even if they didn't use the elevators and used some kind of crane instead, it's still 78.06 ft on it's smaller dimension vs the deck opening's larger dimension which is 60 ft.
They'd have to dismantle either the Intrepid or the orbiter to get it inside. Even if they did, the hangar deck is hardly climate controlled to begin with...
To use the Intrepid site, they'd either have to dismantle part of the ship to get it inside, then extensively retrofit it to provide a climate controlled environment, or they'd have to build a new facility on the Pier along side Intrepid just to house the Shuttle. The Intrepid gets most of it's operating budget from admissions, memberships, and the occasional grant. I don't think it's going to go away tomorrow, but I do get the distinct impression that compared to the Smithsonian, or the Kennedy Space Center (both government funded), it's hanging on my the margins.
The 500 year rule makes sense to me. These are invaluable pieces of human history. The Apollo Command Modules are in the same class. The National Air And Space Museum in D.C. makes sense as a location for one. They already have the Columbia module from Apollo 11, which I assume we would want to maintain to the same standards. However, they also already have the orbiter prototype Enterprise, so it seems to make more sense to spread the three remaining orbiters to allow as many people as possible to have access to them as possible. Perhaps one one at Kennedy Space Center, and one in Houston, and one on the West Coast somewhere?
New York City would allow millions of people to have access. And Intrepid is the premier aerospace site in the city. But it's just not equipped or funded for something like this.
The Aerospace museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base may also be appropriate, but it has a distinct military aerospace bias.
Likewise Vandenberg Air Force Base in California could be a great site, as it was almost a second launch site for the Shuttle. Having an orbiter wind up there permanently could be very apropos. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any museum or public exhibit at Vandenberg, which is a shame. Edwards Air Force Base (Secondary shuttle landing site) and White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico could be appropriate for similar reasons. But again, they're both military bases, and not terribl