The proposal is insane, since you simply can't buy music as property. Everyone knows that all you get, whether you buy a CD or download music, is a license to listen to the music.
If what you bought was actual property, we wouldn't have nearly the DRM and piracy mess as we do now. Lawmakers have to make a decision - leave it as a license and not taxable, or call it property, tax it, and let customers do whatever they like with their property after it's purchased.
But only if you believe that Sony BMG was intelligently designed.
But remember, man is made in God's image so next we can expect an asteroid to hit the earth and kill everyone. That would pretty much fit the sadistic petty jealousy model man seems to have been made with.
Use the RIAA's math to figure damages... A single shared 3 minute song is worth many thousands of dollars in damages to the RIAA, so some software that took thousands of man-hours to create ought to be worth a few billion.
China and the olympic comittee have already managed to get the next Olympic athletes to sign agreements that they will not blog or post anything about their participation, so what is next to be blocked? Will there be a censorship policy in place for the Olympics too?
Let's just get it over with, and fit everyone with a GPS bracelet that sends the authorities your position 24 hrs a day. Add a microphone and a chemical detector, and you're all set. While you're at it, add cameras to every tv and consumer electronic device so they can watch you whenever you're at home or near a camera.
After all, we're talking about TERRORISM!!!!!111one here. And think of the children, definately the children. And the terrorists.
And just think, some day when people decide to vote out someone in office, we can find out who discussed the vote and even who went to the polling stations, so we can deal with the traitorous bastards who voted out the people in power. That'll show them for being traitors. Better yet, when they meet we can arrest them even BEFORE they vote! How great would that be? Get the traitors before they get a chance to actually BE traitors by voting against the government in power. That would be awesome.
Does anyone see the possibility that the used crystals could become the next NIMBY rallying cry? Nobody wants nuclear waste in their state, and nobody is going to want to have CO2 waste storage nearby either. What do they plan on doing with these crystals when they're saturated? Can the CO2 be extracted and put somewhere permanently, and the crystals reused? Do the crystals hold CO2 permanently? If so, what to do with it?
The usual common-sense solutions like dropping it into a deep ocean subduction zone where they'll be folded into the earth's core will make a whole lot of sense, but the same irrational arguments against dropping nuke waste in there will still apply.
All the more reason to run around buck nekkid in your own backyard... Bend over every once in a while and show big brother what you really think of them.
When we get there, we'll find it inhabited by a race of creatures that try to kill anyone that draws a picture of some famous dead alien, beat their wives "for their own good", and wipe their asses with their bare hands. We'll apologize for being morally superior, buy some oil until something scares us badly, invade while feeling somewhat vaguely guilty about the whole thing, and end up wondering how the hell they managed to set up a parallel court system on earth that makes it all ok for them to wander around shouting death to (whoever/whatever) while trying to burn down Paris.
We'll let them have Paris if they promise to take Hugo Chavez home with them. They refuse when Chavez vows to nationalize Jupiter and give it back to the people.
The drive survived because the 9mm is weak. Get a better gun using a better round, like.40 cal or even a good old.45.
I've had a chance to read after-action reports from Iraq and Afghanistan, and the 9mm is pretty much a joke. Most of the forces that really rely on hangun stopping power have obtained emergency authorization to bypass normal procurement processes in order to get better handguns using better ammunition. To my knowledge, a modern.45 is considered one of the best alternatives.
The big questions of course are is it usable by regular people, and is anyone actually working on implementing and including this in any of the major operating systems?
Isn't this something Google either has already done, or *should* do? Google Distributed File System... GDFS. It has the added benefit of also being a curse if it goes wrong. Seriously, isn't this an ideal project for Google? And if they've already done it, is it available for implementation by everyone else?
I'd like to see some sort of distributed filesystem as a standard installation option in a linux distribution... The question would be something to the effect of "would you like your computer to find unused disk storage space on your network, and use it for managed redundant storage available across your network?
It likely wouldn't be very fast (imagine RAID 1 or 5 with each disk connected only by ethernet) and the controller on yet another computer also connected only via ethernet, but for a lot of people, absolute speed isn't really required and having all that free space managed in a usable form would make up for the lack of speed.
If you are too stupid to fill out the ballot correctly, or more likely so damn lazy that you didn't bother to figure out how to fill it out correctly, why is the state under an obligation to FORCE you to change your vote? It's not an IQ test, and even the infamous florida butterfly ballots were figured out correctly by the vast majority of voters. So when a good faith effort is made to ensure that the ballots are reasonably easy to fill out correctly, why is the state under any obligation to change what the "voter" has done with their ballot?
Freedom to vote also (in my opinion) means freedom to NOT vote, and filling out a ballot incorrectly is the same thing as not voting. There are plenty of measures out there to help voters fill out ballots correctly, including small armies of volunteer election officials at the voting stations who's sole reason for existence is to help people vote. If people insist on filling out the ballots incorrectly in spite of all the efforts being made to help them vote, why do we still have a further obligation to force these people to CHANGE THEIR VOTE? After all, a no-vote is just as legitimate a position as a vote.
If you were talking about a system with surplus computing power, I would agree. However...
The infrant version I have appears to be held back by the embedded controller architecture. Adding memory does have a measurable positive effect according to a number of reports from people who are competent enough to take measurements, however I never bothered to do any benchmarking. In addition, adding memory may increase the number of simultaneous users who can stream media from the NV+ by boosting ram cache effectiveness within the NAS.
The speed of the device is still significantly lower than the native speed of my network, hence my previous comment about it not being terribly fast. Enabling jumbo frames can help by up to 20%, but it's still only around 7-12% network utilization on a gigabit ethernet setup with a gigabit switch that properly supports jumbo frames, transferring a large file one way to or from a powerful client. For a better comparision, it's quite a bit slower than simple transfers between my laptop and my desktop over the same network.
It is worth noting that netgear is touting an upgrade to the cpu, so it's very possible that the new version being sold (at an increased price) will be a lot faster.
Regarding the RAID crumping, I assume you're talking about the NAS itself failing. That's an issue with almost any NAS device and the only way a simple consumer like myself could get around that would be to build a regular computer using standard components that could be replaced individually in the event of a failure. The problem with that however, is that identifying the component that failed is not always easy. A RAID controller failure might not be obviously different from ram corruption, a bad cpu, bad cables, or a failing hard drive until it's too late.
In either case, the trick for someone like me (not willing to spend an enormous amount of time chasing the last 1% of reliability) is to continue to use multiple backup schemes. I used to do a monthly backup to an external USB drive. Now, I ghost my desktop to the NAS daily and dump the backup images to the same USB drive monthly. I don't think I'm any worse off than I was, and I'm certainly better off than I was when I had no NAS to use to share files around my lan and only a monthly backup on a single external USB drive.
It's barely audible. It's a low hum and a very slight whisper of air through the vent holes. Since I did the reverse-the-fan mod, I also removed the dust filter which was no longer doing anything, and that helped airflow a bit. The fan is throttled based on temperature so under heavy load the fan goes from completely quiet to that very low hum, and when idle you have to put your head right next to it to hear anything.
From 10 ft away, I can't hear it regardless of the fan setting, although I can hear the drive heads click when they park and wake up.
The "better" part is the simplicity. These suckers are small and require very little setup. Just pop in the drives, give it a few hours to format the array, go through the setup menus and turn on/off whatever features you either want or specifically do not want, and then you can leave the sucker in the closet and never worry about it.
Mine has been virtually trouble free since I set it up, although I'm not using even half of it's capabilities. It's a simple X-RAID backup box for me, but if I wanted to spend some time setting it up, it could be a media server or do any number of other things based on the built-in features.
Yes. These are re-badged Infrant ReadyNAS units. My NV+ works like a champ. You definately want to read the FAQs if you get one however... Depending on the firmware revision, they do not work well with certain hard drives and for a certain range of serial numbers, they recommend pulling out and reversing the fan to help with cooling.
Also, these do not provide terribly fast speeds no matter what kind of drives you use, so for drive selection you're better off going for the drives with the lowest heat and noise profile, vs. the absolute fastest drive on the market. I put 4 500 gig samsungs in mine and it runs quiet and cool, while performing within a percent or so of how everyone else's is running.
A popular mod for these is to drop in a higher capacity ram sodimm. I happened to have one lying around from a previous laptop upgrade, so it was a no-brainer for me. The extra ram supposedly can boost speeds by up to 15%, but I have not measured it either way. I just put in the bigger sodimm, ran the internal memory checker a couple of times, and haven't worried about it since.
I've been a bit over 50,000 ft and up to 1.4 mach. I generally flew the F-15E in a combat-ready configuration and that's about as fast as you get with the plane set up like that. I got a chance to fly a stripped down F-15E on a ferry flight but didn't get a chance to really push it up since I was in civil airspace the whole time. I did do a somewhat lengthy vertical climb after takeoff though, since the thrust to weight ratio was well over 1:1 in that configuration. That was cool.
One max-performance takeoff I did during that ferry flight took about 800 ft to lift off the ground and by the end of the runway I was doing at least 500 kts, although I was a bit too busy to really note the exact airspeed. I pulled it into a vertical climb and reduced power to minimum afterburner to keep from going supersonic in the pullup. I leveled off a few seconds later at 18,000 ft still doing around 400 knots.
And that was in the F-15E variant with the *small* -220 series motors. The bigger -229 motors have approximately 4,000 lbs of additional thrust each.
It's a neat plane, and flying it around is relatively easy. Actually employing it in combat is of course difficult, but the plane itself is pretty simple to fly if you have the right background and training. It has only a few quirky flying qualities but for the most part pilots can learn how to avoid getting in trouble pretty quickly. The huge F-15 wing makes it a forgiving plane to do basic stuff like takeoffs, flying around, and landings. In fact, the basic checkout for just flying the plane takes only a half dozen flights or so. Learning how to actually DO anything in the plane takes a lot longer, but just flying it around is fairly simple.
I always thought the F-15 was an awesome jet, and I have always been amazed that I've had the opportunity to fly it. I was lucky enough to know that it was what I wanted to do from age 10, and I had the determination and ability to figure out how to get there. Lucky and stubborn.
Don't worry, this isn't aimed at you, however it's Friday night and I'm feeling cranky...
*begin rant*
Yea I missed out on a lot while growing up because I was totally focused on my goal (college fun and vacations mostly) but I think it was worth it. For example, if I want to become a pothead someday like some of my high school friends were, it can wait until after I retire.
Lots of people get that backwards... They do drugs or make other limiting lifestyle decisions while still in school (like getting married or pregnant while still a teenager), and for the rest of their life they wonder what it would be like to be a fighter pilot. I figured out that it works better the other way:) There's plenty of time to have fun after I'm done with what I'm doing now.
Not that it was easy, but I'm stubborn and knew both exactly what I wanted and the steps I needed to take to get it. I don't think most young people nowadays realize what they're really giving up when they dope up or get a dozen facial body piercings or whatever, but the fact is that those choices limit their opportunities forever and can't be taken back. The first step on my career was an interview with my congressional representative's staff. I guarantee that if I'd shown up to the interview with my hat on crooked, pants down around my ass, with tattoos or any body piercings, I would have been passed over for someone who actually looked more like a future fighter pilot. Kids today demand respect while acting in a manner that does not earn trust or respect, and it's clear that many of them have no concept of what it takes to get people to trust them with responsibilities and the chance to actually earn true respect.
There is always a need for a fighter to go faster. If you can cruise twice as fast, it can theoretically take half as many fighters to cover a given area with a specific threat response/kill time, or the same number of fighters can cover more area or eliminate threats sooner before they can cause problems. A very fast fighter with the right weapons mix could (for example) range out front of a larger strike force to eliminate enemy fighters, rush over to drop a small diameter bomb on a SAM site that just popped up, and then get back into position to cover the larger strike force's exit from their target areas. A ground commander needing air support might get his assistance in 5 minutes, rather than 10, and that may make all the difference.
There are a number of capabilities that open up with additional speed. It's very difficult to justify spending enormous amounts of money on incremental speed boosts, however as we've already seen with the F-22's supercruise ability, when you make the investment and get it right, the payoff is huge. The F-22 is simply dominating everything that it's faced so far in training engagments and it's proving to be more revolutionary than evolutionary. Almost everything in tactical aviation has changed with the F-22, and it's merely the first design that blends speed, stealth, and data-sharing. By themselves, speed, stealth, and data sharing are force enhancers, but put together they enable revolutionary changes in employment capabilities. You'll probably never hear the details, but it's as big of a deal as it was when desert storm kicked off with a handful of F-117s going downtown all alone against one of the best air defense networks in the world.
Nothing wrong with turning at those speeds, as long as you remain within basic (and generally well defined) load limits. The speed doesn't really matter very much except in very specific situations (such as uneven transsonic shock wave formation). In general, a 9 G turn at 400 knots is pretty much the same as it is at mach 2.0. Dynamic loads caused by airflow may change, but the ability to maneuver is not necessarily directly tied to speed.
There are many hazards in high speed flying, but having the plane explode around you from simply turning at high speed is not one of them. There will be restrictions but turning a plane at high speeds is not some mysterious capability we have yet to sort out.
The original poster is grossly incorrect regarding the max speeds of current fighters. The venerable F-15 has a very achievable basic airframe limit of mach 2.5. It is rarely flown at that speeds for various reasons, however the engines and basic aircraft are quite capable of reaching that speed. One of the biggest limiting factors, as with all high speed aircraft, is heat buildup. Stuff simply starts melting when you get going that fast and sustain it.
Keep in mind that the mach 1.6 speed quoted is generally tied to the F-16, not the F-15, even though both aircraft use essentially the same engines. The difference is that the F-15 uses a complex variable geometry inlet design while the F-16 uses a fixed inlet. There are very good reasons why each aircraft uses one design or the other, but it has nothing to do with the available technology. It has to do mostly with how much cost we are willing to put up with in order to get the plane to perform up to requirements. The F-15, as our primary air superiority fighter, needed to be able to go very fast yet retain good performance at all speeds and altitudes. So the cost and weight penalty of a complex inlet design was warranted. The F-16 on the other hand, was designed from the start to be a lower cost multi-role fighter, and the cost and weight associated with a variable inlet was not justified by the performance requirements for that aircraft's role.
A similar tradeoff was made with the B-1 design. One of the big differences between the original B-1A design and the production B-1B design was the elimination of the costly and complex engine inlets that were needed to make the B-1 a high supersonic design. The B-1B has much simpler inlets and is therefore speed restricted below the original design specs.
Again, this has nothing to do with the available technology. Rather, it's the result of the basic truism that any speed freak knows, even in automotive racing, that going faster costs more. Almost any design can be pushed to a higher speed, but it's going to cost you and at some point you're throwing a whole lot of money to get marginal speed increases.
The original post's point that we haven't seen a breakthrough in this area in a long time is valid, but anyone following hypersonic technology research knows that in the last few years there have been multiple programs flying actual demonstration hardware with some success. The progress is fairly slow in part because this is considered low priority research since there simply isn't much firm demand for faster air-breathing vehicles (expecially ones that burn petrochemicals and therefore create more pollution than slower, more mature, and more efficient designs) however the research continues in the face of the harsh fact that speed is expensive.
Slashdot Mirror
The proposal is insane, since you simply can't buy music as property. Everyone knows that all you get, whether you buy a CD or download music, is a license to listen to the music.
If what you bought was actual property, we wouldn't have nearly the DRM and piracy mess as we do now. Lawmakers have to make a decision - leave it as a license and not taxable, or call it property, tax it, and let customers do whatever they like with their property after it's purchased.
But only if you believe that Sony BMG was intelligently designed.
But remember, man is made in God's image so next we can expect an asteroid to hit the earth and kill everyone. That would pretty much fit the sadistic petty jealousy model man seems to have been made with.
Use the RIAA's math to figure damages... A single shared 3 minute song is worth many thousands of dollars in damages to the RIAA, so some software that took thousands of man-hours to create ought to be worth a few billion.
Sony needs to put up or shut up.
China and the olympic comittee have already managed to get the next Olympic athletes to sign agreements that they will not blog or post anything about their participation, so what is next to be blocked? Will there be a censorship policy in place for the Olympics too?
Let's just get it over with, and fit everyone with a GPS bracelet that sends the authorities your position 24 hrs a day. Add a microphone and a chemical detector, and you're all set. While you're at it, add cameras to every tv and consumer electronic device so they can watch you whenever you're at home or near a camera.
After all, we're talking about TERRORISM!!!!!111one here. And think of the children, definately the children. And the terrorists.
And just think, some day when people decide to vote out someone in office, we can find out who discussed the vote and even who went to the polling stations, so we can deal with the traitorous bastards who voted out the people in power. That'll show them for being traitors. Better yet, when they meet we can arrest them even BEFORE they vote! How great would that be? Get the traitors before they get a chance to actually BE traitors by voting against the government in power. That would be awesome.
Does anyone see the possibility that the used crystals could become the next NIMBY rallying cry? Nobody wants nuclear waste in their state, and nobody is going to want to have CO2 waste storage nearby either. What do they plan on doing with these crystals when they're saturated? Can the CO2 be extracted and put somewhere permanently, and the crystals reused? Do the crystals hold CO2 permanently? If so, what to do with it?
The usual common-sense solutions like dropping it into a deep ocean subduction zone where they'll be folded into the earth's core will make a whole lot of sense, but the same irrational arguments against dropping nuke waste in there will still apply.
All the more reason to run around buck nekkid in your own backyard... Bend over every once in a while and show big brother what you really think of them.
When we get there, we'll find it inhabited by a race of creatures that try to kill anyone that draws a picture of some famous dead alien, beat their wives "for their own good", and wipe their asses with their bare hands. We'll apologize for being morally superior, buy some oil until something scares us badly, invade while feeling somewhat vaguely guilty about the whole thing, and end up wondering how the hell they managed to set up a parallel court system on earth that makes it all ok for them to wander around shouting death to (whoever/whatever) while trying to burn down Paris.
We'll let them have Paris if they promise to take Hugo Chavez home with them. They refuse when Chavez vows to nationalize Jupiter and give it back to the people.
High gas prices... I guess that's one more thing to blame President Bush for.
The drive survived because the 9mm is weak. Get a better gun using a better round, like .40 cal or even a good old .45.
.45 is considered one of the best alternatives.
I've had a chance to read after-action reports from Iraq and Afghanistan, and the 9mm is pretty much a joke. Most of the forces that really rely on hangun stopping power have obtained emergency authorization to bypass normal procurement processes in order to get better handguns using better ammunition. To my knowledge, a modern
Whoops, should have "googled" this first. Here it is, google file system.
http://labs.google.com/papers/gfs.html
The big questions of course are is it usable by regular people, and is anyone actually working on implementing and including this in any of the major operating systems?
Isn't this something Google either has already done, or *should* do? Google Distributed File System... GDFS. It has the added benefit of also being a curse if it goes wrong. Seriously, isn't this an ideal project for Google? And if they've already done it, is it available for implementation by everyone else?
I'd like to see some sort of distributed filesystem as a standard installation option in a linux distribution... The question would be something to the effect of "would you like your computer to find unused disk storage space on your network, and use it for managed redundant storage available across your network?
It likely wouldn't be very fast (imagine RAID 1 or 5 with each disk connected only by ethernet) and the controller on yet another computer also connected only via ethernet, but for a lot of people, absolute speed isn't really required and having all that free space managed in a usable form would make up for the lack of speed.
Isn't this about what it costs to keep us in Iraq for half of a year?
If you are too stupid to fill out the ballot correctly, or more likely so damn lazy that you didn't bother to figure out how to fill it out correctly, why is the state under an obligation to FORCE you to change your vote? It's not an IQ test, and even the infamous florida butterfly ballots were figured out correctly by the vast majority of voters. So when a good faith effort is made to ensure that the ballots are reasonably easy to fill out correctly, why is the state under any obligation to change what the "voter" has done with their ballot?
Freedom to vote also (in my opinion) means freedom to NOT vote, and filling out a ballot incorrectly is the same thing as not voting. There are plenty of measures out there to help voters fill out ballots correctly, including small armies of volunteer election officials at the voting stations who's sole reason for existence is to help people vote. If people insist on filling out the ballots incorrectly in spite of all the efforts being made to help them vote, why do we still have a further obligation to force these people to CHANGE THEIR VOTE? After all, a no-vote is just as legitimate a position as a vote.
If you were talking about a system with surplus computing power, I would agree. However...
The infrant version I have appears to be held back by the embedded controller architecture. Adding memory does have a measurable positive effect according to a number of reports from people who are competent enough to take measurements, however I never bothered to do any benchmarking. In addition, adding memory may increase the number of simultaneous users who can stream media from the NV+ by boosting ram cache effectiveness within the NAS.
The speed of the device is still significantly lower than the native speed of my network, hence my previous comment about it not being terribly fast. Enabling jumbo frames can help by up to 20%, but it's still only around 7-12% network utilization on a gigabit ethernet setup with a gigabit switch that properly supports jumbo frames, transferring a large file one way to or from a powerful client. For a better comparision, it's quite a bit slower than simple transfers between my laptop and my desktop over the same network.
It is worth noting that netgear is touting an upgrade to the cpu, so it's very possible that the new version being sold (at an increased price) will be a lot faster.
Regarding the RAID crumping, I assume you're talking about the NAS itself failing. That's an issue with almost any NAS device and the only way a simple consumer like myself could get around that would be to build a regular computer using standard components that could be replaced individually in the event of a failure. The problem with that however, is that identifying the component that failed is not always easy. A RAID controller failure might not be obviously different from ram corruption, a bad cpu, bad cables, or a failing hard drive until it's too late.
In either case, the trick for someone like me (not willing to spend an enormous amount of time chasing the last 1% of reliability) is to continue to use multiple backup schemes. I used to do a monthly backup to an external USB drive. Now, I ghost my desktop to the NAS daily and dump the backup images to the same USB drive monthly. I don't think I'm any worse off than I was, and I'm certainly better off than I was when I had no NAS to use to share files around my lan and only a monthly backup on a single external USB drive.
It's barely audible. It's a low hum and a very slight whisper of air through the vent holes. Since I did the reverse-the-fan mod, I also removed the dust filter which was no longer doing anything, and that helped airflow a bit. The fan is throttled based on temperature so under heavy load the fan goes from completely quiet to that very low hum, and when idle you have to put your head right next to it to hear anything.
From 10 ft away, I can't hear it regardless of the fan setting, although I can hear the drive heads click when they park and wake up.
The "better" part is the simplicity. These suckers are small and require very little setup. Just pop in the drives, give it a few hours to format the array, go through the setup menus and turn on/off whatever features you either want or specifically do not want, and then you can leave the sucker in the closet and never worry about it.
Mine has been virtually trouble free since I set it up, although I'm not using even half of it's capabilities. It's a simple X-RAID backup box for me, but if I wanted to spend some time setting it up, it could be a media server or do any number of other things based on the built-in features.
Yes. These are re-badged Infrant ReadyNAS units. My NV+ works like a champ. You definately want to read the FAQs if you get one however... Depending on the firmware revision, they do not work well with certain hard drives and for a certain range of serial numbers, they recommend pulling out and reversing the fan to help with cooling.
Also, these do not provide terribly fast speeds no matter what kind of drives you use, so for drive selection you're better off going for the drives with the lowest heat and noise profile, vs. the absolute fastest drive on the market. I put 4 500 gig samsungs in mine and it runs quiet and cool, while performing within a percent or so of how everyone else's is running.
A popular mod for these is to drop in a higher capacity ram sodimm. I happened to have one lying around from a previous laptop upgrade, so it was a no-brainer for me. The extra ram supposedly can boost speeds by up to 15%, but I have not measured it either way. I just put in the bigger sodimm, ran the internal memory checker a couple of times, and haven't worried about it since.
I've been a bit over 50,000 ft and up to 1.4 mach. I generally flew the F-15E in a combat-ready configuration and that's about as fast as you get with the plane set up like that. I got a chance to fly a stripped down F-15E on a ferry flight but didn't get a chance to really push it up since I was in civil airspace the whole time. I did do a somewhat lengthy vertical climb after takeoff though, since the thrust to weight ratio was well over 1:1 in that configuration. That was cool.
One max-performance takeoff I did during that ferry flight took about 800 ft to lift off the ground and by the end of the runway I was doing at least 500 kts, although I was a bit too busy to really note the exact airspeed. I pulled it into a vertical climb and reduced power to minimum afterburner to keep from going supersonic in the pullup. I leveled off a few seconds later at 18,000 ft still doing around 400 knots.
And that was in the F-15E variant with the *small* -220 series motors. The bigger -229 motors have approximately 4,000 lbs of additional thrust each.
It's a neat plane, and flying it around is relatively easy. Actually employing it in combat is of course difficult, but the plane itself is pretty simple to fly if you have the right background and training. It has only a few quirky flying qualities but for the most part pilots can learn how to avoid getting in trouble pretty quickly. The huge F-15 wing makes it a forgiving plane to do basic stuff like takeoffs, flying around, and landings. In fact, the basic checkout for just flying the plane takes only a half dozen flights or so. Learning how to actually DO anything in the plane takes a lot longer, but just flying it around is fairly simple.
I always thought the F-15 was an awesome jet, and I have always been amazed that I've had the opportunity to fly it. I was lucky enough to know that it was what I wanted to do from age 10, and I had the determination and ability to figure out how to get there. Lucky and stubborn.
:) There's plenty of time to have fun after I'm done with what I'm doing now.
Don't worry, this isn't aimed at you, however it's Friday night and I'm feeling cranky...
*begin rant*
Yea I missed out on a lot while growing up because I was totally focused on my goal (college fun and vacations mostly) but I think it was worth it. For example, if I want to become a pothead someday like some of my high school friends were, it can wait until after I retire.
Lots of people get that backwards... They do drugs or make other limiting lifestyle decisions while still in school (like getting married or pregnant while still a teenager), and for the rest of their life they wonder what it would be like to be a fighter pilot. I figured out that it works better the other way
Not that it was easy, but I'm stubborn and knew both exactly what I wanted and the steps I needed to take to get it. I don't think most young people nowadays realize what they're really giving up when they dope up or get a dozen facial body piercings or whatever, but the fact is that those choices limit their opportunities forever and can't be taken back. The first step on my career was an interview with my congressional representative's staff. I guarantee that if I'd shown up to the interview with my hat on crooked, pants down around my ass, with tattoos or any body piercings, I would have been passed over for someone who actually looked more like a future fighter pilot. Kids today demand respect while acting in a manner that does not earn trust or respect, and it's clear that many of them have no concept of what it takes to get people to trust them with responsibilities and the chance to actually earn true respect.
Hmm. I guess that makes me an old fart too.
*end rant*
Yes. Best job in the world.
There is always a need for a fighter to go faster. If you can cruise twice as fast, it can theoretically take half as many fighters to cover a given area with a specific threat response/kill time, or the same number of fighters can cover more area or eliminate threats sooner before they can cause problems. A very fast fighter with the right weapons mix could (for example) range out front of a larger strike force to eliminate enemy fighters, rush over to drop a small diameter bomb on a SAM site that just popped up, and then get back into position to cover the larger strike force's exit from their target areas. A ground commander needing air support might get his assistance in 5 minutes, rather than 10, and that may make all the difference.
There are a number of capabilities that open up with additional speed. It's very difficult to justify spending enormous amounts of money on incremental speed boosts, however as we've already seen with the F-22's supercruise ability, when you make the investment and get it right, the payoff is huge. The F-22 is simply dominating everything that it's faced so far in training engagments and it's proving to be more revolutionary than evolutionary. Almost everything in tactical aviation has changed with the F-22, and it's merely the first design that blends speed, stealth, and data-sharing. By themselves, speed, stealth, and data sharing are force enhancers, but put together they enable revolutionary changes in employment capabilities. You'll probably never hear the details, but it's as big of a deal as it was when desert storm kicked off with a handful of F-117s going downtown all alone against one of the best air defense networks in the world.
Nothing wrong with turning at those speeds, as long as you remain within basic (and generally well defined) load limits. The speed doesn't really matter very much except in very specific situations (such as uneven transsonic shock wave formation). In general, a 9 G turn at 400 knots is pretty much the same as it is at mach 2.0. Dynamic loads caused by airflow may change, but the ability to maneuver is not necessarily directly tied to speed.
There are many hazards in high speed flying, but having the plane explode around you from simply turning at high speed is not one of them. There will be restrictions but turning a plane at high speeds is not some mysterious capability we have yet to sort out.
I know this because I've done it.
I wonder what a duck would be doing up at 80,000 ft where we'd find a plane travelling at 10,000 mph.
The original poster is grossly incorrect regarding the max speeds of current fighters. The venerable F-15 has a very achievable basic airframe limit of mach 2.5. It is rarely flown at that speeds for various reasons, however the engines and basic aircraft are quite capable of reaching that speed. One of the biggest limiting factors, as with all high speed aircraft, is heat buildup. Stuff simply starts melting when you get going that fast and sustain it.
Keep in mind that the mach 1.6 speed quoted is generally tied to the F-16, not the F-15, even though both aircraft use essentially the same engines. The difference is that the F-15 uses a complex variable geometry inlet design while the F-16 uses a fixed inlet. There are very good reasons why each aircraft uses one design or the other, but it has nothing to do with the available technology. It has to do mostly with how much cost we are willing to put up with in order to get the plane to perform up to requirements. The F-15, as our primary air superiority fighter, needed to be able to go very fast yet retain good performance at all speeds and altitudes. So the cost and weight penalty of a complex inlet design was warranted. The F-16 on the other hand, was designed from the start to be a lower cost multi-role fighter, and the cost and weight associated with a variable inlet was not justified by the performance requirements for that aircraft's role.
A similar tradeoff was made with the B-1 design. One of the big differences between the original B-1A design and the production B-1B design was the elimination of the costly and complex engine inlets that were needed to make the B-1 a high supersonic design. The B-1B has much simpler inlets and is therefore speed restricted below the original design specs.
Again, this has nothing to do with the available technology. Rather, it's the result of the basic truism that any speed freak knows, even in automotive racing, that going faster costs more. Almost any design can be pushed to a higher speed, but it's going to cost you and at some point you're throwing a whole lot of money to get marginal speed increases.
The original post's point that we haven't seen a breakthrough in this area in a long time is valid, but anyone following hypersonic technology research knows that in the last few years there have been multiple programs flying actual demonstration hardware with some success. The progress is fairly slow in part because this is considered low priority research since there simply isn't much firm demand for faster air-breathing vehicles (expecially ones that burn petrochemicals and therefore create more pollution than slower, more mature, and more efficient designs) however the research continues in the face of the harsh fact that speed is expensive.