By posting the story, the makers of the software show that they at least approve of the tests used and are (to a degree) in a agreeance with the review's findings.
"People who use Macs don't use them because they're faster." Really? Not to troll, but I've heard a lot of Mac users say that is exactly the reason they use them.
A few years ago, NBC used Jane's F-15 and Fleet Command to demonstrate attacks on Iraq. And the U.S. Army uses Steel Beasts to train its tank crews (in addition to higher-end solutions).
btw, now the U.S. Army is contributing to the development of Steel Beasts 2.
Employers: what have you done to improve employee morale in your company? As an employee, what can I do to improve the morale in the people I work with? How can I make my work environment more enjoyable? What kind of constructive suggestions can I take to management so that they can help improve the situation?
Which the aircraft will not be flying at when in range of triple-A. And also, to know the average cruising speed useful to estimate ETA, you need to know the speed it's traveling at several points and the distances at which they'll be flying at those speeds. Which is kind of like begging the question.
"Distance to target from base/avg cruising spd = time to start shooting blindly in the air."
Too bad aircraft never take a direct path to a target, making the distance very difficult to estimate correctly.
We lost one in Serbia, not Bosnia. The name of the F-117 is Nighthawk. There is no aircraft with the official name of "Stealth" (the B-2 is known as the Spirit, possibly spirit as in ghost but also having patriotic connotations).
"CNN reported this morning that there is concern that Iraq knew our F-117 Stealths were coming and started anti-aircraft fire. This is a huge concern, as they are supposed to be undetectable (a.k.a. 'stealthy')."
Maybe they started anti-aircraft fire because they knew the aircraft were coming, which has nothing to do with being able to detect and/or track the aircraft. You can not use this to base an opinion stating that Iraq may have the capability to detect the F-117.
"After the gulf war the pentagion admitted that iraq's chinese made radars could detect them, but there was not enough accuracy for their missles to lock on to them."
Really? And every military analyst (except the almighty you), Western and others forgot or never heard about this? And I guess this fact missed every single engineer designing every single 5th generation combat aircraft, all of which involve some measure of radar stealth. Maybe you should help them out.
"It's not as if they designed it to be able to fly down Main Street Baghdad and have people wondering what the noise was. It's not an invisible UFO." The F-117 is very quiet due to the type of engines and how they're housed in the fuselage. In addition, I can't see how making it less stealthy is beneficial in any way. And why wouldn't the Skunk Works engineers have intended to make the F-117 as undetectable as possible?
"It is, however, more difficult for radar to distinguish from background reflections, and thus more difficult for missile radar to track. It's also heat-shielded against heat-seeking missiles." Background reflections from what? Clouds produce negligible amounts of radar echoes, it would be impossible to design an aircraft, especially with the knowledge at the time of the F-117's construction, to be able to hide in those. And what use would a stealth aircraft be if it could only be stealthy when there were clouds present? Also, do you know how surface to air missiles track targets? They use either radars or infra-red emissions (i.e. heat). If a missile's radar has trouble tracking the target, so would any other radar. Judging by your lack of knowledge of this simple fact, I suggest you not inject your worthless, uninformed opinions.
And what the hell does "heat-shielded" mean? When I read that I thought of something like the space shuttle's heat-resistant tiles. The F-117 does has reduced infra-red emissions via wide, flat exhaust ports that cause the hot air to cool down more rapidly. There is no sort "heat-shielding" involved.
"Moonlight is what allowed the Serbs to down an F-117 during that campaign several years back."
The official explanation from the DoD was that the Serbians caught on to the route the F-117 was taking, which had been used previously in other strike missions (I think this explanation sounds quite reasonable). The whole thing is still widely debated though, and I don't see how you can state your hypothesis as fact.
"Perhaps they found a wavelength that the stealth fails at?" A very Hollywood idea. Radar low-observability is designed to foil all radio frequencies. It is debatable at best that long-wave frequency radars are capable of detecting them. It's undeniable though that Iraq has neither the resources nor the expertise to construct such a radar.
U.S. Defense spending is less, as a percentage of GDP, than it was in the 70s and 80s. We were able to support the higher level then, why couldn't we now, especially when the US is less dependent on natural resources, like oil.
Also, the actual percentage is only slightly higher than of all of the western European countries, and far lower than those of Russia, China, Cuba and the "axis of evil" countries.
Also, according to Swedish research firm, China and France have each sold Iraq at least $5 billion worth of weapons (one of the obvious examples of this are the Mirage F1 fighter aircraft).
i wrote this about 5 months ago, so things i mention here may appear more or less realistic now.
Iraq Attack Plan
In the Gulf War, an air campaign of "instant thunder" (as opposed to rolling thunder in vietnam) was carried out. The campaign was defensive and did not penetrate Iraq deeply. The land campaign featured a massive buildup of forces for months on the border, and it would appear that a similar thing is occuring (I recall hearing of vehicles being re-painted in desert camo first in June) followed by a huge attack on Iraqi forces. Key to supporting this was the supply base (M1's only get 1mpg) the US managed to build up in the previous months.
Build up What I've heard: spec ops in Jordan, airbase extended in Qatar, commercial shipping used for military purposes, carrier battle groups being moved to the Persian Gulf. ----
Psychological operations begin. Air dropping of US "propaganda" leaflets, broadcasting of US government radio and TV via EC-130 special operations aircraft.
Phase 1 Offensive Air Strikes. Attack air defenses as well as C3 (command, control, communications) structures. Strikes from carriers in the gulf, airbase in Qatar (reportedly a USAF airstrip there has been extended, to allow for the usage of heavier aircraft or aircraft with heavier payloads), long range strikes from US airbases. SAM radars attacked first with HARM's (done extensively by the US during the Serbian conflict, blinding the enemy), then move in with bombers (B-52's, B-1B's etc.). B-2's and F-117's (these are both "stealth" aircraft) used to strike heavily defended critical targets. As the IADS (integrated air defense system) is taken out, strikes are carried out farther inland. US special forces (SEALs, Rangers, Delta Force) used for coordinating these strikes (acting as FAC's- forward air controllers) as well as taking out smaller more mobile targets (generals, mobile SAM's) and disabling WMD facilities (I've heard rumors of an "agent-defeat" weapon that can neutralize NBC agents as well). Collateral damage avoided at all costs, strikes not carried out on targets potentially containing or affecting non-combatants heavily, such as power plants. Long-range missiles destroyed immediately to prevent involvement of Israel. Patriot SAMS deployed in western parts of Iraq.
Iraq's air force would be destroyed after strikes on hangars and supply (fuel, weapons) depots. Strikes on runways would have to be carried out almost constantly to keep them grounded (as was done in the Gulf War, since a runway can be repaired in several hours). Any type of "long-arm" of the Iraqi military would be gone. Also, any chances of the war spreading would now be greatly reduced.
Phase 2 Deploy mechanized infantry. The US military reportedly has been using commercial shipping companies to transport military equipment for months. This implies tanks, since their weight prevents them from being transported easily by air (only 1 can be carried in a C-5, the US's largest transport aircraft, of which there is a very small number). Armored cavalry units sweep across south eastern Iraq facing weak opposition. Fox NBC vehicles used and units deep into Iraq equipped with extensive NBC gear (gas masks, NBC warfare suits). Virtually all of the ground forces probably equipped with at least gas masks. As US land forces proceed deeper, unmanned recce (Predators, Global Hawks) used to assess the remaining power of the Iraqi military. Forces from Jordan and the south east converge at the center, infiltrating Iraqi command centers. Targets in this phase would focus on palaces and high-risk areas. Very little collateral damage (one of the key advantages of ground forces, aircraft can't do everything), rules of engagement generally set to be very strict (fire if fired upon or at least visual id prior to engagement). High Iraqi POW count (in the Gulf War, pilots would sometimes see Iraqi tank crews waving white flags before bombs were even dropped), Iraqi military demoralized by ma
A target of opportunity is just a generic military term referring to targets that are planned and designated as the battle goes, usually not containing targets of strategic importance. Target of opportunity does not mean anything especially significant.
Regardless of how realistic CG appears, you will always have the CG expert-wannabes complain about its unrealistic appearance. The only way to truly have an honest comparison is to not inform a person that something is CG.
Spiderman in my opinion had several instances of photo-realistic CG, at least in stills I've seen (I have not seen the actual movie). One photorealistic shot shows Spiderman in a red fabric suit looking towards some apartments, another shows a bunch of floats in Times Square (the floats are CG). When I first saw those stills, "CG" did not pass my mind.
Episode II had a part where Obi-Wan is fighting Jango Fett, and while his wrist gets caught by Jango's cable thing, dragging Obi-Wan all about, Obi-Wan is actually entirely CG. I thought that was quite photorealistic. Again, when I had watched the movie I did not know it was CG at all.
What I found significant about these instances is the fact that you only notice how unrealistic the unrealistic CG is- all of the photorealistic occurences of CG do exactly what their creators intended it to do- disappear.
P.S. for another "photorealistic" CG project check out http://www.amazonsoul.com. The following pictures look photorealistic to me. http://www.splutterfish.com/sf/spluttergaller y/pic s/32.jpg http://www.splutterfish.com/sf/splutterg allery/pic s/21.jpg
"We have never seen a 3D rendering of a human face that could pass even the most cursory glance." Just because you haven't doesn't mean none of us have. I think this is pretty photorealistic.
Oh please. How was my comment a troll? Is there any way to post something negative about Apple users and/or Apple's products without it being considered a troll?
Don't mod me down just because you disagree with me.
While this may seem to be a troll, I think this poster does have a point. Mac users should realize that as much as they disparage the PC world, it is that world in which they exist.
Sun Microsystems and IBM have several wide screen LCD's available. The IBM T221 in fact has a resolution 4 times larger than the largest Apple cinema display, and was available several months before it. Of course, being a Mac head, you wouldn't know this.
Straw man argument. You've seen "games" as the main complaint? I haven't heard a PC user bash Macs for a lack of games for the past 3 years (they bash them for other reasons though). It has been quite clear for some time that there is a sufficient number of games available for Macs for most people.
"the 'games' reason for having a PC kind of loses steam". It lost steam about when nobody even considered it.
If you've decided to acquiesce on the "no-Windows" stance, I'd suggest looking at the CNET Notebook section for info. There are sections are for value as well as thin and light notebooks, among others, and looking through those sections is a lot quicker than navigating through the separate laptop sections on each manufacturer's website.
My take on notebooks (currently); wait. Banias is around the corner (March 12 last I heard) bringing +3 hour battery time coupled with excellent performance (it's easy to find slower laptops with significantly longer battery times though). Cost will be an issue (if you're looking at sub-$1500), so I'd suggest waiting even longer after Banias. Having performance, price and portability all in one laptop is about to become possible though; all you need to do is hold off from purchasing for a bit more.
Slashdot Mirror
By posting the story, the makers of the software show that they at least approve of the tests used and are (to a degree) in a agreeance with the review's findings.
Can I have your old Octane then?
"People who use Macs don't use them because they're faster."
Really? Not to troll, but I've heard a lot of Mac users say that is exactly the reason they use them.
A few years ago, NBC used Jane's F-15 and Fleet Command to demonstrate attacks on Iraq. And the U.S. Army uses Steel Beasts to train its tank crews (in addition to higher-end solutions).
btw, now the U.S. Army is contributing to the development of Steel Beasts 2.
"Average cruising speed."
Which the aircraft will not be flying at when in range of triple-A. And also, to know the average cruising speed useful to estimate ETA, you need to know the speed it's traveling at several points and the distances at which they'll be flying at those speeds. Which is kind of like begging the question.
"Distance to target from base/avg cruising spd = time to start shooting blindly in the air."
Too bad aircraft never take a direct path to a target, making the distance very difficult to estimate correctly.
We lost one in Serbia, not Bosnia. The name of the F-117 is Nighthawk. There is no aircraft with the official name of "Stealth" (the B-2 is known as the Spirit, possibly spirit as in ghost but also having patriotic connotations).
Hussein said that he did not have weapons of mass destruction. Scuds with conventional warheads are not weapons of mass destruction.
"CNN reported this morning that there is concern that Iraq knew our F-117 Stealths were coming and started anti-aircraft fire. This is a huge concern, as they are supposed to be undetectable (a.k.a. 'stealthy')."
Maybe they started anti-aircraft fire because they knew the aircraft were coming, which has nothing to do with being able to detect and/or track the aircraft. You can not use this to base an opinion stating that Iraq may have the capability to detect the F-117.
"After the gulf war the pentagion admitted that iraq's chinese made radars could detect them, but there was not enough accuracy for their missles to lock on to them."
Really? And every military analyst (except the almighty you), Western and others forgot or never heard about this? And I guess this fact missed every single engineer designing every single 5th generation combat aircraft, all of which involve some measure of radar stealth. Maybe you should help them out.
"It's not as if they designed it to be able to fly down Main Street Baghdad and have people wondering what the noise was. It's not an invisible UFO."
The F-117 is very quiet due to the type of engines and how they're housed in the fuselage. In addition, I can't see how making it less stealthy is beneficial in any way. And why wouldn't the Skunk Works engineers have intended to make the F-117 as undetectable as possible?
"It is, however, more difficult for radar to distinguish from background reflections, and thus more difficult for missile radar to track. It's also heat-shielded against heat-seeking missiles."
Background reflections from what? Clouds produce negligible amounts of radar echoes, it would be impossible to design an aircraft, especially with the knowledge at the time of the F-117's construction, to be able to hide in those. And what use would a stealth aircraft be if it could only be stealthy when there were clouds present? Also, do you know how surface to air missiles track targets? They use either radars or infra-red emissions (i.e. heat). If a missile's radar has trouble tracking the target, so would any other radar. Judging by your lack of knowledge of this simple fact, I suggest you not inject your worthless, uninformed opinions.
And what the hell does "heat-shielded" mean? When I read that I thought of something like the space shuttle's heat-resistant tiles. The F-117 does has reduced infra-red emissions via wide, flat exhaust ports that cause the hot air to cool down more rapidly. There is no sort "heat-shielding" involved.
"Moonlight is what allowed the Serbs to down an F-117 during that campaign several years back."
The official explanation from the DoD was that the Serbians caught on to the route the F-117 was taking, which had been used previously in other strike missions (I think this explanation sounds quite reasonable). The whole thing is still widely debated though, and I don't see how you can state your hypothesis as fact.
"Perhaps they found a wavelength that the stealth fails at?"
A very Hollywood idea. Radar low-observability is designed to foil all radio frequencies. It is debatable at best that long-wave frequency radars are capable of detecting them. It's undeniable though that Iraq has neither the resources nor the expertise to construct such a radar.
Also, the actual percentage is only slightly higher than of all of the western European countries, and far lower than those of Russia, China, Cuba and the "axis of evil" countries.
Also, according to Swedish research firm, China and France have each sold Iraq at least $5 billion worth of weapons (one of the obvious examples of this are the Mirage F1 fighter aircraft).
i wrote this about 5 months ago, so things i mention here may appear more or less realistic now.
Iraq Attack Plan
In the Gulf War, an air campaign of "instant thunder" (as opposed to rolling thunder in vietnam) was carried out. The campaign was defensive and did not penetrate Iraq deeply. The land campaign featured a massive buildup of forces for months on the border, and it would appear that a similar thing is occuring (I recall hearing of vehicles being re-painted in desert camo first in June) followed by a huge attack on Iraqi forces. Key to supporting this was the supply base (M1's only get 1mpg) the US managed to build up in the previous months.
Build up
What I've heard: spec ops in Jordan, airbase extended in Qatar, commercial shipping used for military purposes, carrier battle groups being moved to the Persian Gulf.
----
Psychological operations begin. Air dropping of US "propaganda" leaflets, broadcasting of US government radio and TV via EC-130 special operations aircraft.
Phase 1
Offensive Air Strikes.
Attack air defenses as well as C3 (command, control, communications) structures.
Strikes from carriers in the gulf, airbase in Qatar (reportedly a USAF airstrip there has been extended, to allow for the usage of heavier aircraft or aircraft with heavier payloads), long range strikes from US airbases. SAM radars attacked first with HARM's (done extensively by the US during the Serbian conflict, blinding the enemy), then move in with bombers (B-52's, B-1B's etc.). B-2's and F-117's (these are both "stealth" aircraft) used to strike heavily defended critical targets. As the IADS (integrated air defense system) is taken out, strikes are carried out farther inland. US special forces (SEALs, Rangers, Delta Force) used for coordinating these strikes (acting as FAC's- forward air controllers) as well as taking out smaller more mobile targets (generals, mobile SAM's) and disabling WMD facilities (I've heard rumors of an "agent-defeat" weapon that can neutralize NBC agents as well). Collateral damage avoided at all costs, strikes not carried out on targets potentially containing or affecting non-combatants heavily, such as power plants. Long-range missiles destroyed immediately to prevent involvement of Israel. Patriot SAMS deployed in western parts of Iraq.
Iraq's air force would be destroyed after strikes on hangars and supply (fuel, weapons) depots. Strikes on runways would have to be carried out almost constantly to keep them grounded (as was done in the Gulf War, since a runway can be repaired in several hours). Any type of "long-arm" of the Iraqi military would be gone. Also, any chances of the war spreading would now be greatly reduced.
Phase 2
Deploy mechanized infantry.
The US military reportedly has been using commercial shipping companies to transport military equipment for months. This implies tanks, since their weight prevents them from being transported easily by air (only 1 can be carried in a C-5, the US's largest transport aircraft, of which there is a very small number). Armored cavalry units sweep across south eastern Iraq facing weak opposition. Fox NBC vehicles used and units deep into Iraq equipped with extensive NBC gear (gas masks, NBC warfare suits). Virtually all of the ground forces probably equipped with at least gas masks. As US land forces proceed deeper, unmanned recce (Predators, Global Hawks) used to assess the remaining power of the Iraqi military. Forces from Jordan and the south east converge at the center, infiltrating Iraqi command centers. Targets in this phase would focus on palaces and high-risk areas. Very little collateral damage (one of the key advantages of ground forces, aircraft can't do everything), rules of engagement generally set to be very strict (fire if fired upon or at least visual id prior to engagement). High Iraqi POW count (in the Gulf War, pilots would sometimes see Iraqi tank crews waving white flags before bombs were even dropped), Iraqi military demoralized by ma
A target of opportunity is just a generic military term referring to targets that are planned and designated as the battle goes, usually not containing targets of strategic importance. Target of opportunity does not mean anything especially significant.
Regardless of how realistic CG appears, you will always have the CG expert-wannabes complain about its unrealistic appearance. The only way to truly have an honest comparison is to not inform a person that something is CG.
r y/pic s/32.jpgg allery/pic s/21.jpg
Spiderman in my opinion had several instances of photo-realistic CG, at least in stills I've seen (I have not seen the actual movie). One photorealistic shot shows Spiderman in a red fabric suit looking towards some apartments, another shows a bunch of floats in Times Square (the floats are CG). When I first saw those stills, "CG" did not pass my mind.
Episode II had a part where Obi-Wan is fighting Jango Fett, and while his wrist gets caught by Jango's cable thing, dragging Obi-Wan all about, Obi-Wan is actually entirely CG. I thought that was quite photorealistic. Again, when I had watched the movie I did not know it was CG at all.
What I found significant about these instances is the fact that you only notice how unrealistic the unrealistic CG is- all of the photorealistic occurences of CG do exactly what their creators intended it to do- disappear.
P.S. for another "photorealistic" CG project check out http://www.amazonsoul.com.
The following pictures look photorealistic to me.
http://www.splutterfish.com/sf/spluttergalle
http://www.splutterfish.com/sf/splutter
"We have never seen a 3D rendering of a human face that could pass even the most cursory glance."
Just because you haven't doesn't mean none of us have. I think this is pretty photorealistic.
Oh please. How was my comment a troll? Is there any way to post something negative about Apple users and/or Apple's products without it being considered a troll?
Don't mod me down just because you disagree with me.
While this may seem to be a troll, I think this poster does have a point. Mac users should realize that as much as they disparage the PC world, it is that world in which they exist.
Macs, like PC's, are just tools. Nothing more.
Sun Microsystems and IBM have several wide screen LCD's available. The IBM T221 in fact has a resolution 4 times larger than the largest Apple cinema display, and was available several months before it. Of course, being a Mac head, you wouldn't know this.
Straw man argument. You've seen "games" as the main complaint? I haven't heard a PC user bash Macs for a lack of games for the past 3 years (they bash them for other reasons though). It has been quite clear for some time that there is a sufficient number of games available for Macs for most people.
"the 'games' reason for having a PC kind of loses steam". It lost steam about when nobody even considered it.
Hello Wil Wheaton. How are you?
If you've decided to acquiesce on the "no-Windows" stance, I'd suggest looking at the CNET Notebook section for info. There are sections are for value as well as thin and light notebooks, among others, and looking through those sections is a lot quicker than navigating through the separate laptop sections on each manufacturer's website.
My take on notebooks (currently); wait. Banias is around the corner (March 12 last I heard) bringing +3 hour battery time coupled with excellent performance (it's easy to find slower laptops with significantly longer battery times though). Cost will be an issue (if you're looking at sub-$1500), so I'd suggest waiting even longer after Banias. Having performance, price and portability all in one laptop is about to become possible though; all you need to do is hold off from purchasing for a bit more.
data dies