So when Microsoft plays unfairly with it's competitors it's fine. But when the EU does it to them, they run to daddy?
I think you suffer from a serious prospective problem. You sound like my 5 year old cousin whining after he gets caught.. "but he hit me first". Just because they have done Bad Things(TM) in the past doesn't give anyone the right to do Bad Things(TM) to them in the present. Their hearing should be fair... and I don't think it's too much to ask. The entire point of "freedom" and "liberty" is that things are fair for all, even those with whom we disagree... cheering and hoping for injustice against your opponents is borderline facism.
That being said, until I get something other then vague generalities about "documents", it's going to be impossible to convince me that anything unfair is actually occurring.
and yet most supermarkets sell water guns, cap guns, etc. Porn is the least evil thing in the world. people need to grow the fuck up.
Yes, water pistols vs hardcore anal sex. Isn't it obvious which one I'd rather children be exposed to. Clearly, we all need to grow up into your world. Excuse me for considering you a complete moron.
It's amazing the kind of tripe that gets modded up these days.
* Republicans want to regulate what I can and can't do in my bedroom with other consenting adults, it's called anti-sodomy legislation
Excuse me.. but where are these Republicans that pushing their new anti-sodomy legislation? Just because some crazy whacko nutjobs in some town somewhere decided that they are going to enforce 100 year old laws... doesn't give you the honest intellectual argument that the entire Republican party is in favor of anti-sodomy laws. That's just plain ridiculous.
* Republicans want to regulate what women can do with their bodies, it's called pro-life legislation
I can't believe you are still clinging to this losing argument. It's plainly obvious that everyone who is a rational person on this issue doesn't buy this nonsense. You just make them roll their eyes. The pro-life crowd frames the issue as a murder/homocide/life issue, and the pro-choice side frames it as a woman's-choice-woman's-body. Repeating your preferential wording of the issue in order to support your point is fallacious logic and doesn't make you right. There are important questions on this issue, it's not simple, at all.. and pretending that is shows how far you are willing to go with your intellectual dishonesty to push your agenda.
* Republicans are for stronger National Security laws, which translates into more governmental snooping
In specific instances.. yes.. In general, no. That is a false dichotomy. It's just like Republicans who say that Democrats don't care about Terrorists. It's a strawman and a rhetorical tool more than anything.
* Republicans are for less controls on businesses, which leads to more business snooping
And the Democrats are for more controls on business, which means regulation, which means regulatory agencies, which means larger governments. Wasn't the topic of conversation about the size of government? Why are you switching to a new strawman to beatup? Seems like this bullet, in fact, supports the premise of the Republicans and smaller government.
2) Legalize everything which creates a huge backlash on the right
While everyone here would from an emotional standpoint prefer option 2
Do you honestly believe you speak for all of us when you say that everyone thinks that everything should be "legal"? Has the slashbot groupthink gotten that bad? What do you mean by "legal". The Miller case very clearly states that personal possession cannot be regulated of simply "obscene" materials. However obscene material's sale and distribution can be regulated... the defintion of "obscene" is left to local standards.
I'm all for consenting adults getting to look at whatever they want... The Miller case determined it is constitutional to regulate the sale of "obscene" materials... I firmly believe that pornographic materials shouldn't be sold in supermarkets and to 11 year olds. That means that the state should have the right to regulate it.. and that right comes from the Supreme Court's Miller ruling on its classification as obscene.
The Miller ruling didn't make "obscene" materials illegal... it gave States the rights to regulate their sale and distribution. Therefore, hardly, can we consider the unanimous "emotional" choice to 'just make everything legal'.
Hmmm, so if I'm getting 10FPS in some game, then it'll boost it to around 100FPS? That can't be right...
Why did you remove the According to the benchmark... part before quoting? You can't honestly believe that a benchmark specifically tailored to test a particular functionality actually can represent all cases and all the time, can you? When Intel tells you the SSE instruction set can increase speed by up to 4x, you don't actually thinkg "Hmm... my word processor is gonna be 4x as fast!". This is no different. At one particular contrived benchmark meant to simulate physics, a GPU outperforms a CPU by a factor of 10.
The GPU may be 10x faster at physics calculations, but the summary says framerate improvments of 10x - so how realistic is something like 600 fps? Ridiculous, even if you had a monitor/graphics system capable of 600 refreshes per second.
Emphasis mine. You already know what I'm going to say, based on my emphasis, right?
Regardless, the summary doesn't even say that. It says according to the benchmark, it got a 10x framerate improvement. The benchmark happened to be a very intensive physics simulation. You don't extrapolate that out to mean it gets a 10x improvement in all cases...
10x faster? They might as well just say it's infinity times faster so that we know they are bullshitting from the second we read it...
Everything I've ever read (and it's been alot) on people moving proper algorithms from CPUs to GPUs routinely get 10x speedups. If you don't believe it... try to play an FPS game with software emulation and no graphics hardware... I can promise you the speedup from the hardware is well above 10x.
By offloading physics from the CPU to the graphics card, this improves frame rates?
Yes. Why does that surprise you? When you do incredibly complicated physics simulation, things can be very parallel and consequently GPUs outperform CPUs.
Why would I waste precious GPU processing to process Physics? I mean, all the CPU does these days is handle AI, physics, and texture loading. If you offload physics to the GPU, then the CPU is doing less and your swamping the GPU with more work.
You seem to be under the impression that your GPU cycles are more important than your cpu cycles. This is done with SLI for a reason..
If it does increase frame rates, then I would suggest why not improve graphics rendering rather then physics processing.
Because the quality of the render is controlled in software? Because hardware is currently limited by, ya know, physics and technology?
I find that for all the advances nVidia and ATI have made over the years, 3D gaming visual quality is still inferior to cinematic quality 3D rendering.
And in other news, offline processing is still more powerful than online processing. There's a shocker.
I would prefer if nVidia and ATI actually focused on bringing cinematic quality 3D rendering to gaming, instead of just claiming they do.
First of all, 99.9% of what nVidia and ATI do is exactly that. They are also starting to realize that the GPU paradigm, with minor modification, can be turned into a very powerful co-processor... and they are the experts at creating those types of chips. The market for them is growing... and they don't want to miss the boat.
I want smooth high-poly models with realistic lighting and 60fps.
And I want peace in the middle east. Give it 10 years, one of us may get our wish.
Sacre-bleu! You mean I could get fired for being incompetent? Zees eez an outrage!
At the risk of going off-topic.... It's even worse than that. Under the new law, you can only get fired if you are under the age of 26, have worked less than 2 years, and are incompetant. What's hilarious about the situation is the law was passed because companies refuse to hire people because they cannot fire them... so there are no jobs. Unemployment among people under 26 is at 23%. The government tries to give the kids a chance to prove themselves that would make companies eager to hire them.. and the kids riot...
The Law of Unintended Consequences has wreaked havoc in France with their unfirable 35-hour workforce. Unemployment a problem? Make it so you can't fire people! It sounds great, but like most of economics, something that seems good at level one does the exact opposite at level two. So unemployment has skyrocketed.
It's the way of the world, folks. Our corporate masters can't have you exposed to a different world view, now can they. And, of course the citizens who should be protecting the old "democratic" system are way too busy.
Luckily we have crazy people with tinfoil hats who are fresh out meds reminding us.
You said:
It didn't look to me like he was complaining that the F-18 was a bad plane.
He said:
To be fair, after a lot of overhauls and modifications the F1-11 actually turned out to be a good plane, the F-18 on the other hand...
As for your other point, the Aussies were well aware of the capabilities of the F18. The spec had been long determined and tested. They knew exactly what they were buying.. there was no bait & switch here. They've tried using A/B/C/D Model F18s for things they were not designed for. The main missions that they are trying to use them for required the US to redesign the F18 into the superhornet models E/F. There was a reason the US redesigned and built new planes...
Remember the Gore Tax - a 'universal service' fee on your phone bill to make telecomm. services 'widely available' to public schools. So where are they going to get the money for universal Internet access. Where do you think? Expect a hefty new federal tax on your broadband access to pay for this new universal access.
You are on the right track. Be very wary of this. How do they plan to fund this? Tax breaks? Subsidies? What happens when the DoJ wants information from an ISP? Do they have the threat of losing "funding"? Letting the government take money from us in the form of taxes, and give it to the ISPS is incredibly ineffecient and also it puts the government in the loop.. which means they can start demanding things and regulating things if ISPs want their cut. This could, very easily, be the conduit through which the internet could be controlled.
The plan is complete vaporware, for now, but just be really really really wary.
The F18's here are having to have total center barrel replacements - mostly because we've used them for roles where the US uses F16/15's. Good case of using the wrong tool for the job.
The F18's precision bombing ability has only been a recent addition in -our- fleet. Perhaps you guys got some better stuff first up.
The F18 has insufficient range, speed or strike power to make it ideally practical here in AUSTRALIA. A little different no doubt in the US.
The F18 isn't really suited for independent action across our gulf to areas such as Indonesia, even more so now with our "opponents" having purchased the Sukhoi's
The F18 wasn't designed to do any of those things. Coming on to Slashdot and complaining about the capabilities of the F18 and how it's a terrible aircraft because it doesn't do what you want is a bit strange -- especially when it's capabilities were well defined when they were bought. It's a matter of having the right tool for the job... It's not the F18s fault that Australia wants to use it outside of it's ideal mission. It's an extremely capable and powerful airplane that serves it's mission excellent. Don't blame the jet because the people acquiring and planning with it are using it in roles it doesn't excel.
You don't buy a fork and then bitch it doesn't cut steak very well. These jets are designed to be "jacks of all trade" that are medium in all respects and easy to maintain. It fits that description perfectly. The "center barrel replacement" is because Australia is using pre-E model hornets for E-model roles. Like I said, considering the F18 as a weapon system anything other than a resounding success is just plain wrong and just a shows a severe lack of information. I understand that you think you need an airplane with XYZ capabilites and got ABC. Unfortunately, you knew you were getting ABC from the getgo and chose to forgo your requirements of XYZ. That doesn't make it a bad airplane. It makes it bad decision making.
The U.S. is ditching all their F-15s and replacing them with F-18 SuperHornet
This is infact completely false. F-15Cs are being replaced by F-22s. At least that's the plan, but no one inside the airforce is convinced that's going to happen in the foreseeable future. The F-15Es (Strike Eagles) have not been scheduled to be replaced, at all.
The F-18 is a medium level fighter that's meant to be cheap and easy to maintain. It's accomplishes a unique mission, but it can't really touch the 15s and 16s as far as lethality is concerned.
Here's the article I read a few days ago It's on the end of page 1 & beginning of page 2 that they explain why exactly the JSF is going to suck.
The airframe and powerplant is only modestly important in modern combat aircraft, though the US is very good at this type of design.
Don't believe the hype. Time after time in aviation history has shown that every time "dogfighting" was supposed to be dead, and designs were advanced, that it wasn't quite as dead as they thought, and people died because of the mistake.
There is a reason that the F15 and the F22 were designed the way they were... to learn the lessons from Korea and Vietnam with the sabres and phantoms. Never underestimate the importance of speed, either. When you are faster, you control the engagement. You can run at any time, and they cannot.
I've got a brother-in-law who works with the F-18's and there's absolutely no end to the 'critical failures' that they're seeing. Given the technical 'superiority' of these JSF's, I'm expecting they'll barely get out of the maintainance hangers.
To be fair, after a lot of overhauls and modifications the F1-11 actually turned out to be a good plane, the F-18 on the other hand...
Oh, please. I was an engineer who worked mostly on F15s, but I still have enough expertise to call bullshit. You have it completely backwards. The F-111 was a maintence mess and it became obselete reasonably quickly given the changing dynamic.. by the time they finally got their acts together, it was on its way out the door... but the F18? Are you crazy? It's one of the very few examples of major acquisition programs that went off relatively cleanly. The first 18Es delivered met all the specs, on schedule, and on budget. It has a reputation, in the navy, as being the most dependable plane they have. I've heard it quoted that the Hornet has 3x the mean-time-to-failure of any other aircraft they have. The plane was designed to replace the 14 Tomcat and has, as far as I know, exceeded all expectations. It's better, stronger, cheaper to operate, and is less failure prone.
I don't know who your "brother in law" is, but all planes have problems. All planes need to be fixed. They are not simple. They get old, and things go bad. It happens. Considering the F18 anything but a resounding success, however, is incredibly ill-informed.
I can't even see a tactical purpose for the JSF in this sun charred, massively open country.
You can't? How about the fact that the F18E is one the best anti-ship attack aircraft in the world? Do I need to explain to you the tactical advantage of Australia having that capability? How about the fact that it's far superior air-to-air compared with any of the cold-war era relic airplanes that every rogue nation on that side of the globe has? Even China.
You've already proven yourself to be a troll. I don't feed trolls. You don't make idiotic inflamatory statements, repeatedly state them as fact, and then expect rational people to get into a reasoned debate with you. You want an all-out shitstorm flamefest where you get to pump your flawed ideaology. Sorry, I prefer rational people.
So commenting on military ethics in Iraq in a thread about military ethics in Iraq is "completely offtopic" now?So commenting on military ethics in Iraq in a thread about military ethics in Iraq is "completely offtopic" now?
The fact you cannot distinguish between strategic and geopolitical "ethics" of the Bush Adminisitration, and the tactical ethics of some captain in a desert somewhere with a new weapon at his disposal is exactly my point. You are uninformed and have an axe to grind. You are looking for any excuse you can find to justify injecting your flawed, hyperbolic, and trolling agenda into this disscussion. You got modded into the crapper because your opinions are unfounded, inflamatory, exaggerations, and stated as "fact".. when they are very obviously highly arguable, questionable, and in one case wrong.
In fact, many of us could overlook the fact that you are tacitly changing the subject to the thing you really care about (that you hate Bush)... if your opinion was anything more then a terrible attempt at a troll by stating highly controversial positions as facts and then baiting someone to argue with you. That's the very definition of trolling -- hence the correct mod into oblivion.
The reason he keeps bringing up new stuff with shallow arguments and not really dealing with the issues you are trying to discuss is because he's a moonbat lunatic... I've enjoyed your attempt to talk sense into him, but he's beyond hope. He isn't talking with you, he's using you to bemoan all the strawmen he can think of with platitudes because he thinks that counts as "activism". There is no rational thought, so you should stop trying. I appreciate, though, the effort.
On a side note, you are entirely correct when you say that people like him are just as dangerous as the ones on the right. And neither extreme is very "marginalized" despite what the talking heads would like us all to think.
I love slashdot. Uncomfortable facts immediately become "Troll".
I do love slashdot. This the only place in the world that someone can go completely offtopic to rail on the Bush administration using incredibly slanted, oversimplified, and in several cases wrong conclusions and hyperbole to promote his political agenda.... and then get mad that he doesn't get accolades for his insight. Get a grip, troll.
Yeah, me too. Remember Gregory Peck and Jimmy Stewart in the 1952 version of "Brokeback Mountain". Now THAT was a classic. Nothing like that crappy remake that came out last year. WHAT was that studio thinking?
I don't understand how throwing in gay cowboys somehow makes the story line good. Screw Gregory Peck.. I liked this concept better when it was called Romeo & Juliet. Syriana was boooorrriiiinnngggg. Capote was booorriiiinnnngggg. Munich was ok. The only compelling movie I saw all year was Crash, and it's the only one I've told people they should see. I'm glad it won the Oscar. Brokeback was a well directed, well produced, shittier version of Romeo and Juliet. Them being gay doesn't somehow increase its plot value, to me.
On the flipside, this entire story is "spin". The box office lost 8% last year, curiously DVD sales are up 8% in 2005. Both are about equal, now, at roughly 22 billion. Let's not forget the 7 billion we spent renting, them, either.
you'll note that the majority of experimental studies show no difference between playing a video game and any other active task
Are you kidding? You might want to reread it buddy. I've already found you the information you claim doesn't exist... I'm not going to summerize it for you to correct you.
This is a 20 page summary, with 80 references for further reading, if you want. While the author(s) concludes that more research must be done, the majority of the studies conducted see negative psychological consequences of violence in video games. Schutte et al, Silvern et al, Cooper et al, Irwin et al, Anderson et al all conducted empircal studies with an outcome of aggressive behavior seen to increase in some capacity. Two studies found none. Several others found other psychological consequences including arousal.
If you actually cared about being informed before spouting your opinion, it would take you less time to find the information then to educate yourself. Since I know you are too lazy or too bad at basic search features to find it yourself, I will go ahead and point you to page 13 which provides a nice summary.
Slashdot Mirror
So when Microsoft plays unfairly with it's competitors it's fine. But when the EU does it to them, they run to daddy?
I think you suffer from a serious prospective problem. You sound like my 5 year old cousin whining after he gets caught.. "but he hit me first". Just because they have done Bad Things(TM) in the past doesn't give anyone the right to do Bad Things(TM) to them in the present. Their hearing should be fair... and I don't think it's too much to ask. The entire point of "freedom" and "liberty" is that things are fair for all, even those with whom we disagree... cheering and hoping for injustice against your opponents is borderline facism.
That being said, until I get something other then vague generalities about "documents", it's going to be impossible to convince me that anything unfair is actually occurring.
"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. " -Yogi Berra
Amazingly true... especially in economics...
and yet most supermarkets sell water guns, cap guns, etc. Porn is the least evil thing in the world. people need to grow the fuck up.
Yes, water pistols vs hardcore anal sex. Isn't it obvious which one I'd rather children be exposed to. Clearly, we all need to grow up into your world. Excuse me for considering you a complete moron.
It's amazing the kind of tripe that gets modded up these days.
* Republicans want to regulate what I can and can't do in my bedroom with other consenting adults, it's called anti-sodomy legislation
Excuse me.. but where are these Republicans that pushing their new anti-sodomy legislation? Just because some crazy whacko nutjobs in some town somewhere decided that they are going to enforce 100 year old laws... doesn't give you the honest intellectual argument that the entire Republican party is in favor of anti-sodomy laws. That's just plain ridiculous.
* Republicans want to regulate what women can do with their bodies, it's called pro-life legislation
I can't believe you are still clinging to this losing argument. It's plainly obvious that everyone who is a rational person on this issue doesn't buy this nonsense. You just make them roll their eyes. The pro-life crowd frames the issue as a murder/homocide/life issue, and the pro-choice side frames it as a woman's-choice-woman's-body. Repeating your preferential wording of the issue in order to support your point is fallacious logic and doesn't make you right. There are important questions on this issue, it's not simple, at all.. and pretending that is shows how far you are willing to go with your intellectual dishonesty to push your agenda.
* Republicans are for stronger National Security laws, which translates into more governmental snooping
In specific instances.. yes.. In general, no. That is a false dichotomy. It's just like Republicans who say that Democrats don't care about Terrorists. It's a strawman and a rhetorical tool more than anything.
* Republicans are for less controls on businesses, which leads to more business snooping
And the Democrats are for more controls on business, which means regulation, which means regulatory agencies, which means larger governments. Wasn't the topic of conversation about the size of government? Why are you switching to a new strawman to beatup? Seems like this bullet, in fact, supports the premise of the Republicans and smaller government.
2) Legalize everything which creates a huge backlash on the right
While everyone here would from an emotional standpoint prefer option 2
Do you honestly believe you speak for all of us when you say that everyone thinks that everything should be "legal"? Has the slashbot groupthink gotten that bad? What do you mean by "legal". The Miller case very clearly states that personal possession cannot be regulated of simply "obscene" materials. However obscene material's sale and distribution can be regulated... the defintion of "obscene" is left to local standards.
I'm all for consenting adults getting to look at whatever they want... The Miller case determined it is constitutional to regulate the sale of "obscene" materials... I firmly believe that pornographic materials shouldn't be sold in supermarkets and to 11 year olds. That means that the state should have the right to regulate it.. and that right comes from the Supreme Court's Miller ruling on its classification as obscene.
The Miller ruling didn't make "obscene" materials illegal... it gave States the rights to regulate their sale and distribution. Therefore, hardly, can we consider the unanimous "emotional" choice to 'just make everything legal'.
Hmmm, so if I'm getting 10FPS in some game, then it'll boost it to around 100FPS? That can't be right...
Why did you remove the According to the benchmark... part before quoting? You can't honestly believe that a benchmark specifically tailored to test a particular functionality actually can represent all cases and all the time, can you? When Intel tells you the SSE instruction set can increase speed by up to 4x, you don't actually thinkg "Hmm... my word processor is gonna be 4x as fast!". This is no different. At one particular contrived benchmark meant to simulate physics, a GPU outperforms a CPU by a factor of 10.
The GPU may be 10x faster at physics calculations, but the summary says framerate improvments of 10x - so how realistic is something like 600 fps? Ridiculous, even if you had a monitor/graphics system capable of 600 refreshes per second.
Emphasis mine. You already know what I'm going to say, based on my emphasis, right?
Regardless, the summary doesn't even say that. It says according to the benchmark, it got a 10x framerate improvement. The benchmark happened to be a very intensive physics simulation. You don't extrapolate that out to mean it gets a 10x improvement in all cases...
10x faster? They might as well just say it's infinity times faster so that we know they are bullshitting from the second we read it...
Everything I've ever read (and it's been alot) on people moving proper algorithms from CPUs to GPUs routinely get 10x speedups. If you don't believe it... try to play an FPS game with software emulation and no graphics hardware... I can promise you the speedup from the hardware is well above 10x.
By offloading physics from the CPU to the graphics card, this improves frame rates?
Yes. Why does that surprise you? When you do incredibly complicated physics simulation, things can be very parallel and consequently GPUs outperform CPUs.
Why would I waste precious GPU processing to process Physics? I mean, all the CPU does these days is handle AI, physics, and texture loading. If you offload physics to the GPU, then the CPU is doing less and your swamping the GPU with more work.
You seem to be under the impression that your GPU cycles are more important than your cpu cycles. This is done with SLI for a reason..
If it does increase frame rates, then I would suggest why not improve graphics rendering rather then physics processing.
Because the quality of the render is controlled in software? Because hardware is currently limited by, ya know, physics and technology?
I find that for all the advances nVidia and ATI have made over the years, 3D gaming visual quality is still inferior to cinematic quality 3D rendering.
And in other news, offline processing is still more powerful than online processing. There's a shocker.
I would prefer if nVidia and ATI actually focused on bringing cinematic quality 3D rendering to gaming, instead of just claiming they do.
First of all, 99.9% of what nVidia and ATI do is exactly that. They are also starting to realize that the GPU paradigm, with minor modification, can be turned into a very powerful co-processor... and they are the experts at creating those types of chips. The market for them is growing... and they don't want to miss the boat.
I want smooth high-poly models with realistic lighting and 60fps.
And I want peace in the middle east. Give it 10 years, one of us may get our wish.
Sacre-bleu! You mean I could get fired for being incompetent? Zees eez an outrage!
At the risk of going off-topic.... It's even worse than that. Under the new law, you can only get fired if you are under the age of 26, have worked less than 2 years, and are incompetant. What's hilarious about the situation is the law was passed because companies refuse to hire people because they cannot fire them... so there are no jobs. Unemployment among people under 26 is at 23%. The government tries to give the kids a chance to prove themselves that would make companies eager to hire them.. and the kids riot...
The Law of Unintended Consequences has wreaked havoc in France with their unfirable 35-hour workforce. Unemployment a problem? Make it so you can't fire people! It sounds great, but like most of economics, something that seems good at level one does the exact opposite at level two. So unemployment has skyrocketed.
Pulling out of the French market could cost Apple two, maybe two and a half percent of their iTMS revenues.
It seems like France is the perfect market. They have 20% unemployment for people under 30... what else are they kids gonna do? Riot?
It's the way of the world, folks. Our corporate masters can't have you exposed to a different world view, now can they. And, of course the citizens who should be protecting the old "democratic" system are way too busy.
Luckily we have crazy people with tinfoil hats who are fresh out meds reminding us.
You said: It didn't look to me like he was complaining that the F-18 was a bad plane.
He said: To be fair, after a lot of overhauls and modifications the F1-11 actually turned out to be a good plane, the F-18 on the other hand...
As for your other point, the Aussies were well aware of the capabilities of the F18. The spec had been long determined and tested. They knew exactly what they were buying.. there was no bait & switch here. They've tried using A/B/C/D Model F18s for things they were not designed for. The main missions that they are trying to use them for required the US to redesign the F18 into the superhornet models E/F. There was a reason the US redesigned and built new planes...
Remember the Gore Tax - a 'universal service' fee on your phone bill to make telecomm. services 'widely available' to public schools. So where are they going to get the money for universal Internet access. Where do you think? Expect a hefty new federal tax on your broadband access to pay for this new universal access.
You are on the right track. Be very wary of this. How do they plan to fund this? Tax breaks? Subsidies? What happens when the DoJ wants information from an ISP? Do they have the threat of losing "funding"? Letting the government take money from us in the form of taxes, and give it to the ISPS is incredibly ineffecient and also it puts the government in the loop.. which means they can start demanding things and regulating things if ISPs want their cut. This could, very easily, be the conduit through which the internet could be controlled.
The plan is complete vaporware, for now, but just be really really really wary.
The F18's here are having to have total center barrel replacements - mostly because we've used them for roles where the US uses F16/15's. Good case of using the wrong tool for the job.
The F18's precision bombing ability has only been a recent addition in -our- fleet. Perhaps you guys got some better stuff first up.
The F18 has insufficient range, speed or strike power to make it ideally practical here in AUSTRALIA. A little different no doubt in the US.
The F18 isn't really suited for independent action across our gulf to areas such as Indonesia, even more so now with our "opponents" having purchased the Sukhoi's
The F18 wasn't designed to do any of those things. Coming on to Slashdot and complaining about the capabilities of the F18 and how it's a terrible aircraft because it doesn't do what you want is a bit strange -- especially when it's capabilities were well defined when they were bought. It's a matter of having the right tool for the job... It's not the F18s fault that Australia wants to use it outside of it's ideal mission. It's an extremely capable and powerful airplane that serves it's mission excellent. Don't blame the jet because the people acquiring and planning with it are using it in roles it doesn't excel.
You don't buy a fork and then bitch it doesn't cut steak very well. These jets are designed to be "jacks of all trade" that are medium in all respects and easy to maintain. It fits that description perfectly. The "center barrel replacement" is because Australia is using pre-E model hornets for E-model roles. Like I said, considering the F18 as a weapon system anything other than a resounding success is just plain wrong and just a shows a severe lack of information. I understand that you think you need an airplane with XYZ capabilites and got ABC. Unfortunately, you knew you were getting ABC from the getgo and chose to forgo your requirements of XYZ. That doesn't make it a bad airplane. It makes it bad decision making.
The U.S. is ditching all their F-15s and replacing them with F-18 SuperHornet
This is infact completely false. F-15Cs are being replaced by F-22s. At least that's the plan, but no one inside the airforce is convinced that's going to happen in the foreseeable future. The F-15Es (Strike Eagles) have not been scheduled to be replaced, at all.
The F-18 is a medium level fighter that's meant to be cheap and easy to maintain. It's accomplishes a unique mission, but it can't really touch the 15s and 16s as far as lethality is concerned.
Here's the article I read a few days ago It's on the end of page 1 & beginning of page 2 that they explain why exactly the JSF is going to suck.
The airframe and powerplant is only modestly important in modern combat aircraft, though the US is very good at this type of design.
Don't believe the hype. Time after time in aviation history has shown that every time "dogfighting" was supposed to be dead, and designs were advanced, that it wasn't quite as dead as they thought, and people died because of the mistake.
There is a reason that the F15 and the F22 were designed the way they were... to learn the lessons from Korea and Vietnam with the sabres and phantoms. Never underestimate the importance of speed, either. When you are faster, you control the engagement. You can run at any time, and they cannot.
I've got a brother-in-law who works with the F-18's and there's absolutely no end to the 'critical failures' that they're seeing. Given the technical 'superiority' of these JSF's, I'm expecting they'll barely get out of the maintainance hangers.
To be fair, after a lot of overhauls and modifications the F1-11 actually turned out to be a good plane, the F-18 on the other hand...
Oh, please. I was an engineer who worked mostly on F15s, but I still have enough expertise to call bullshit. You have it completely backwards. The F-111 was a maintence mess and it became obselete reasonably quickly given the changing dynamic.. by the time they finally got their acts together, it was on its way out the door... but the F18? Are you crazy? It's one of the very few examples of major acquisition programs that went off relatively cleanly. The first 18Es delivered met all the specs, on schedule, and on budget. It has a reputation, in the navy, as being the most dependable plane they have. I've heard it quoted that the Hornet has 3x the mean-time-to-failure of any other aircraft they have. The plane was designed to replace the 14 Tomcat and has, as far as I know, exceeded all expectations. It's better, stronger, cheaper to operate, and is less failure prone.
I don't know who your "brother in law" is, but all planes have problems. All planes need to be fixed. They are not simple. They get old, and things go bad. It happens. Considering the F18 anything but a resounding success, however, is incredibly ill-informed.
I can't even see a tactical purpose for the JSF in this sun charred, massively open country.
You can't? How about the fact that the F18E is one the best anti-ship attack aircraft in the world? Do I need to explain to you the tactical advantage of Australia having that capability? How about the fact that it's far superior air-to-air compared with any of the cold-war era relic airplanes that every rogue nation on that side of the globe has? Even China.
Now tell, which facts of mine are wrong?
You've already proven yourself to be a troll. I don't feed trolls. You don't make idiotic inflamatory statements, repeatedly state them as fact, and then expect rational people to get into a reasoned debate with you. You want an all-out shitstorm flamefest where you get to pump your flawed ideaology. Sorry, I prefer rational people.
So commenting on military ethics in Iraq in a thread about military ethics in Iraq is "completely offtopic" now?So commenting on military ethics in Iraq in a thread about military ethics in Iraq is "completely offtopic" now?
The fact you cannot distinguish between strategic and geopolitical "ethics" of the Bush Adminisitration, and the tactical ethics of some captain in a desert somewhere with a new weapon at his disposal is exactly my point. You are uninformed and have an axe to grind. You are looking for any excuse you can find to justify injecting your flawed, hyperbolic, and trolling agenda into this disscussion. You got modded into the crapper because your opinions are unfounded, inflamatory, exaggerations, and stated as "fact".. when they are very obviously highly arguable, questionable, and in one case wrong.
In fact, many of us could overlook the fact that you are tacitly changing the subject to the thing you really care about (that you hate Bush)... if your opinion was anything more then a terrible attempt at a troll by stating highly controversial positions as facts and then baiting someone to argue with you. That's the very definition of trolling -- hence the correct mod into oblivion.
The reason he keeps bringing up new stuff with shallow arguments and not really dealing with the issues you are trying to discuss is because he's a moonbat lunatic... I've enjoyed your attempt to talk sense into him, but he's beyond hope. He isn't talking with you, he's using you to bemoan all the strawmen he can think of with platitudes because he thinks that counts as "activism". There is no rational thought, so you should stop trying. I appreciate, though, the effort.
On a side note, you are entirely correct when you say that people like him are just as dangerous as the ones on the right. And neither extreme is very "marginalized" despite what the talking heads would like us all to think.
I love slashdot. Uncomfortable facts immediately become "Troll".
I do love slashdot. This the only place in the world that someone can go completely offtopic to rail on the Bush administration using incredibly slanted, oversimplified, and in several cases wrong conclusions and hyperbole to promote his political agenda.... and then get mad that he doesn't get accolades for his insight. Get a grip, troll.
Yeah, me too. Remember Gregory Peck and Jimmy Stewart in the 1952 version of "Brokeback Mountain". Now THAT was a classic. Nothing like that crappy remake that came out last year. WHAT was that studio thinking?
I don't understand how throwing in gay cowboys somehow makes the story line good. Screw Gregory Peck.. I liked this concept better when it was called Romeo & Juliet. Syriana was boooorrriiiinnngggg. Capote was booorriiiinnnngggg. Munich was ok. The only compelling movie I saw all year was Crash, and it's the only one I've told people they should see. I'm glad it won the Oscar. Brokeback was a well directed, well produced, shittier version of Romeo and Juliet. Them being gay doesn't somehow increase its plot value, to me.
On the flipside, this entire story is "spin". The box office lost 8% last year, curiously DVD sales are up 8% in 2005. Both are about equal, now, at roughly 22 billion. Let's not forget the 7 billion we spent renting, them, either.
you'll note that the majority of experimental studies show no difference between playing a video game and any other active task
Are you kidding? You might want to reread it buddy. I've already found you the information you claim doesn't exist... I'm not going to summerize it for you to correct you.
But the information is not easy to find.
Really? Then why did it take me less then 2 minutes to find a survey article?
Video game violence: A review of the empirical literature
This is a 20 page summary, with 80 references for further reading, if you want. While the author(s) concludes that more research must be done, the majority of the studies conducted see negative psychological consequences of violence in video games. Schutte et al, Silvern et al, Cooper et al, Irwin et al, Anderson et al all conducted empircal studies with an outcome of aggressive behavior seen to increase in some capacity. Two studies found none. Several others found other psychological consequences including arousal.
If you actually cared about being informed before spouting your opinion, it would take you less time to find the information then to educate yourself. Since I know you are too lazy or too bad at basic search features to find it yourself, I will go ahead and point you to page 13 which provides a nice summary.