That extraordinary ratio is from USAF-directed simulations, under their rules of engagement, not real world combat. And we know they'd never exaggerate the F-22's effectiveness, now would they?
No, their ratio has been more along the lines of 140:1. I figured I'd use a lower estimate, exactly so that people like you wouldn't bitch about it.
The Raptor, while impressive on paper is indeed a lemon, especially with it's software problems.
I'm sorry, I can't compete with your intimate knowledge of US military secrets. Frankly, I'm surprised that you're spilling them on slashdot, instead of selling them off to China.
Where? I've never heard of shoulder-launched cluster bombs, and your link doesn't provide any such info.
As for using RPG's to shoot down a blimp at a 3km altitude... only Rambo could do that. The rest of us are handicapped by human limitations and the laws of physics.
Put it this way, despite the might of the US military, they still haven't found/dealt with some arab dude by the name of Obama living in a cave. Advanced weaponry is not the be all and end all of combat
They also haven't found Jimmy Hoffa yet. So what? What does that have to do with advanced weaponry, or combat? Sorry, but your argument is a non-sequitur.
Costing $140 million - that's 5 times the cost of a F-15 or Su-30
And a tank costs a lot more than a pickup truck. So what? If the F-22 can maintain, say, a 20:1 kill ratio against other aircraft, then the 5:1 cost disparity is more than justified. Not to mention the fact that you can reduce operating costs since you no longer need to maintain such a large fleet, so you long-term costs may be more like 2:1 or even lower.
Sheer nonsense. Aircraft Carriers changed the face of naval warfare. Prior to their introduction, battles were dependent on a balance between armor, weaponry, and maneuverability. Ships would slug it out with cannons until one of them went down. After the introduction of the aircraft carrier, armor and speed became almost irrelevant - any ship in existence could be sunk with a couple well placed bombs from an airplane. Just look at the battles in the Pacific during WW2 - aircraft were the deciding factor in almost every single battle, with ship-to-ship engagements being almost nonexistent.
I think you misspelled "shit I pulled out of my ass". But what the hell - let's see you list just one credible source which shows that Osama Bin Laden received funding from the US. If you can do it, you'll be the first.
Go on, I'll wait.
Let me guess -- you're not an American. Israeli?
That's right, anyone who questions your made-up version of history is either an American or a Dirty Stinking Jew, eh? Let me guess... most of your shirts are brown, right?
And they're dinky compared to other AA missiles
Considering we were discussing shoulder launched systems, no, they're not. Thanks to sensor improvements over the years, Stingers are still top of the line. If you're comparing shoulder launched missiles to ICBM's on the other hand, then yeah, they're "dinky". Only a fool would bother with such comparisons, though. May as well say that a Hummer is dinky because it's smaller than a Battleship.
Dammit.... I tried to mod you "funny" and hit "troll" by accident. Now I have to comment in order to undo that mod, which also undoes all the other mods I've made in this thread.
Note to Slashdot admins: A DROPDOWN BOX IS A VERY VERY STUPID MECHANISM FOR MODERATION. That is all.
we're not talking about the serious SAM's used to shoot down jets, but the dinky little things that we gave Bin Laden to shoot down Soviet helicopters
Leaving aside the silly Bin Laden comment (do you get ALL your information from Michael Moore?), the US supplied the Mujahadeen with Stinger missile systems, which aren't exactly "dinky". And they cost about $40,000 a piece.
In World War 2 the Germans had anti-aircraft guns that could easily get to much over 20,000 feet
Well, yes, artillery is referred to as "guns", but that's a bit misleading, don't you think? If the bad guys have managed to move artillery pieces that close to your base of operations, you've got bigger problems than whether or not your blimp gets shot down.
Many cheap modern shoulder held anti-aircraft missiles can easily shoot this high and a blimp would be easy to hit
Yeah, most modern shoulder-launched ground-to-air missiles could get a lock at that range, but most of these missiles also use infrared guidance. Would a blimp give off enough of a heat signature for a lock?
1. I'm not sure who "they" are, but no, there's no conspiracy to brainwash poor immigrant children into not being racist. "They" probably have better things to do.
2. Kids joke and so does everyone else, but there's a difference between a joke made for humor and a "joke" made to mock and exclude.
3. You clearly have no idea what evolution is.
As a side note, I'd love to know what fool(s) modded you up.
Seems like the old stereotypes at work. Hire Asians, they're smart! Don't hire those negores, though; they're lazy and they steal!
Having been born in a part of Europe that isn't much different from Poland, I can safely say that these stereotypes were quite common in much of Europe, at least while I was a child. When we moved to Canada, seeing asians didn't strike me as all that odd, but I really didn't know what to make of blacks. I got in trouble more than once at school for making racist comments about (or to) black classmates, but thanks to having spent my formative years in a nation which placidly accepts racial bigotry, it wasn't until years later that I really understood that there was anything wrong about the things I had said. I think it's hard for people who were born into multicultural societies to really understand what it's like being raised in that kind of culture.
That's a completely different thing. He's referring to an incident where MS limited the number of inbound connections on port 80. They did that specifically to make it impossible for people to run large scale web-servers on NT Workstation. It had nothing to do with security/stability - it was purely an attempt to protect their profit margin.
And, btw, one of the first things I did after installing XP was get rid of that silly TCP/IP restriction. I agree that it was useful for at least slowing the transmission of worms, as well as limiting how effective they could be as part of a DDOS botnet attack, but I had the exact opposite experience from yours when it came to P2P apps.
I'm also fairly certain that you're wrong about it being "a simple reg entry". You actually had to patch TCPIP.SYS in order to remove/modify the connection limit.
so what was that stuff about having to get the Windows Server kernel to get over the 4GB issue on the 32bit stuff?
It's a stupid hack to get the 32 bit edition to run PAE. I'm not really sure why you'd want to do that when you can just run the 64 bit version instead. Maybe if you have a lot of legacy devices which don't have 64 bit drivers, I guess. Either way, it has nothing to do with money.
As others have pointed out, MS most likely chose to disable this feature because it would have been a nightmare when it came to support. Enabling PAE creates all sorts of potential problems due to the vast variety of hardware and software used by average consumers. The server version supports PAE, probably because server hardware/software isn't nearly as varied, and corporate clients tend to shell out a lot of cash for support.
Besides, I was also referring to the client TCP/IP connection limit they put in back when Netscape was selling their web server for Windows NT Workstation and providing a solution cheaper than Microsoft's restriction of only running IIS on their Windows Server productline.
That's not really surprising. NT Workstation and NT Server were almost identical outside of the domain controller functionality. If MS hadn't put some limitations in place, any small business with a competent IT staff would have purchased NT Workstation licenses for the majority of their servers. I can't blame them for trying to protect an existing market, instead of destroying it overnight. What they essentially did was say "here, you can have NT server for one tenth of the usual price... but we're going to pull out some features first". I really don't see anything wrong with that.
Time for the obligatory car analogy: It's as if Lamborghini offered to sell me a car for $25,000 that looks and handles exactly like the Diablo... but is missing a spare tire and is governed to a top speed of 100 mph. Even with the restrictions, it'd be a great deal.
The apps I am talking about are Windows 16 bit, not DOS.
I haven't actually tried it, but if it's not possible to run Win 3.1 under DosBox, I'll eat my hat. It'll even run XTreeGold:)
The virtualbox tip looks very interesting, and I will check into that for the laptops.
Glad I could help. Best thing about VirtualBox (aside from being free and fast and awesome) is that it's open source and therefore available for a number of platforms. I have several virtual machine images stored on my OpenSolaris server so that I can mount them over the network on any of my other computers. I can run the same installation of, say, Windows XP, on my Windows 7 desktop, my Linux laptop, and the Solaris server itself. I only switched to it initially because it ran much faster than VMWare, but the ease of cross-platform use is a huge bonus.
The other.5% are like me and still have some 16 bit software they are really old games from the Win 3.1 days I still love (sim tower and others), or old utilities from mid 90s that haven't been replaced simply because I am used to them and they work. For these, virtualPC is the only option to run them.
Of course, it would be more reasonable if you could install VirtualPC on Vista Home Premium, as I have two laptops that run it (bought them used) and there is no technical reason they can't, except MS doesn't want them to.
If you're really wedded to the idea of using a fancy-shmancy emulator, go download Suns VirtualBox. It'll install on your "home premium" without problems, and I find it to be a far superior product. Plus the "free" thing is kinda nice.
So there's been a hardware based solution to this since the days of the Pentium Pro( early 90s ) and it is used by open source while Microsoft uses the 4GB limit as a tool to get people to pay up.
That's complete bullshit. If you purchased the 32 bit version of Vista, you can go on the Microsoft website and order the 64 bit version for a little more than the cost of shipping. Or you can just buy 64 bit to start with - there's no price difference between the 32 bit and 64 bit editions.
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No, their ratio has been more along the lines of 140:1. I figured I'd use a lower estimate, exactly so that people like you wouldn't bitch about it.
I'm sorry, I can't compete with your intimate knowledge of US military secrets. Frankly, I'm surprised that you're spilling them on slashdot, instead of selling them off to China.
Where? I've never heard of shoulder-launched cluster bombs, and your link doesn't provide any such info.
As for using RPG's to shoot down a blimp at a 3km altitude ... only Rambo could do that. The rest of us are handicapped by human limitations and the laws of physics.
They also haven't found Jimmy Hoffa yet. So what? What does that have to do with advanced weaponry, or combat? Sorry, but your argument is a non-sequitur.
And a tank costs a lot more than a pickup truck. So what? If the F-22 can maintain, say, a 20:1 kill ratio against other aircraft, then the 5:1 cost disparity is more than justified. Not to mention the fact that you can reduce operating costs since you no longer need to maintain such a large fleet, so you long-term costs may be more like 2:1 or even lower.
You know, bumper-sticker-thinkers don't really fit in on slashdot. That's what facebook is for.
Sheer nonsense. Aircraft Carriers changed the face of naval warfare. Prior to their introduction, battles were dependent on a balance between armor, weaponry, and maneuverability. Ships would slug it out with cannons until one of them went down. After the introduction of the aircraft carrier, armor and speed became almost irrelevant - any ship in existence could be sunk with a couple well placed bombs from an airplane. Just look at the battles in the Pacific during WW2 - aircraft were the deciding factor in almost every single battle, with ship-to-ship engagements being almost nonexistent.
I think you misspelled "shit I pulled out of my ass". But what the hell - let's see you list just one credible source which shows that Osama Bin Laden received funding from the US. If you can do it, you'll be the first.
Go on, I'll wait.
That's right, anyone who questions your made-up version of history is either an American or a Dirty Stinking Jew, eh? Let me guess ... most of your shirts are brown, right?
Considering we were discussing shoulder launched systems, no, they're not. Thanks to sensor improvements over the years, Stingers are still top of the line. If you're comparing shoulder launched missiles to ICBM's on the other hand, then yeah, they're "dinky". Only a fool would bother with such comparisons, though. May as well say that a Hummer is dinky because it's smaller than a Battleship.
Or the fourth option: God dun it!
Maybe we should give this one to the guys over at the Discovery institute. Let them figure it out.
Dammit .... I tried to mod you "funny" and hit "troll" by accident. Now I have to comment in order to undo that mod, which also undoes all the other mods I've made in this thread.
Note to Slashdot admins: A DROPDOWN BOX IS A VERY VERY STUPID MECHANISM FOR MODERATION. That is all.
Leaving aside the silly Bin Laden comment (do you get ALL your information from Michael Moore?), the US supplied the Mujahadeen with Stinger missile systems, which aren't exactly "dinky". And they cost about $40,000 a piece.
Yah, those lead-lined clouds cause huge problems for our radar arrays ...
Well, yes, artillery is referred to as "guns", but that's a bit misleading, don't you think? If the bad guys have managed to move artillery pieces that close to your base of operations, you've got bigger problems than whether or not your blimp gets shot down.
Yeah, most modern shoulder-launched ground-to-air missiles could get a lock at that range, but most of these missiles also use infrared guidance. Would a blimp give off enough of a heat signature for a lock?
If Some would argue that, then Some is a fucking idiot.
Interesting. Thanks for the correction. Have you tried downloading a ... ahem ... "unauthorized" version, and installing it using your OEM key?
No, I can't, and if you look at my responses to him you'll see that I made the same argument.
1. I'm not sure who "they" are, but no, there's no conspiracy to brainwash poor immigrant children into not being racist. "They" probably have better things to do.
2. Kids joke and so does everyone else, but there's a difference between a joke made for humor and a "joke" made to mock and exclude.
3. You clearly have no idea what evolution is.
As a side note, I'd love to know what fool(s) modded you up.
Seems like the old stereotypes at work. Hire Asians, they're smart! Don't hire those negores, though; they're lazy and they steal!
Having been born in a part of Europe that isn't much different from Poland, I can safely say that these stereotypes were quite common in much of Europe, at least while I was a child. When we moved to Canada, seeing asians didn't strike me as all that odd, but I really didn't know what to make of blacks. I got in trouble more than once at school for making racist comments about (or to) black classmates, but thanks to having spent my formative years in a nation which placidly accepts racial bigotry, it wasn't until years later that I really understood that there was anything wrong about the things I had said. I think it's hard for people who were born into multicultural societies to really understand what it's like being raised in that kind of culture.
That's a completely different thing. He's referring to an incident where MS limited the number of inbound connections on port 80. They did that specifically to make it impossible for people to run large scale web-servers on NT Workstation. It had nothing to do with security/stability - it was purely an attempt to protect their profit margin.
And, btw, one of the first things I did after installing XP was get rid of that silly TCP/IP restriction. I agree that it was useful for at least slowing the transmission of worms, as well as limiting how effective they could be as part of a DDOS botnet attack, but I had the exact opposite experience from yours when it came to P2P apps.
I'm also fairly certain that you're wrong about it being "a simple reg entry". You actually had to patch TCPIP.SYS in order to remove/modify the connection limit.
It's a stupid hack to get the 32 bit edition to run PAE. I'm not really sure why you'd want to do that when you can just run the 64 bit version instead. Maybe if you have a lot of legacy devices which don't have 64 bit drivers, I guess. Either way, it has nothing to do with money.
As others have pointed out, MS most likely chose to disable this feature because it would have been a nightmare when it came to support. Enabling PAE creates all sorts of potential problems due to the vast variety of hardware and software used by average consumers. The server version supports PAE, probably because server hardware/software isn't nearly as varied, and corporate clients tend to shell out a lot of cash for support.
That's not really surprising. NT Workstation and NT Server were almost identical outside of the domain controller functionality. If MS hadn't put some limitations in place, any small business with a competent IT staff would have purchased NT Workstation licenses for the majority of their servers. I can't blame them for trying to protect an existing market, instead of destroying it overnight. What they essentially did was say "here, you can have NT server for one tenth of the usual price ... but we're going to pull out some features first". I really don't see anything wrong with that.
Time for the obligatory car analogy: It's as if Lamborghini offered to sell me a car for $25,000 that looks and handles exactly like the Diablo ... but is missing a spare tire and is governed to a top speed of 100 mph. Even with the restrictions, it'd be a great deal.
I haven't actually tried it, but if it's not possible to run Win 3.1 under DosBox, I'll eat my hat. It'll even run XTreeGold :)
Glad I could help. Best thing about VirtualBox (aside from being free and fast and awesome) is that it's open source and therefore available for a number of platforms. I have several virtual machine images stored on my OpenSolaris server so that I can mount them over the network on any of my other computers. I can run the same installation of, say, Windows XP, on my Windows 7 desktop, my Linux laptop, and the Solaris server itself. I only switched to it initially because it ran much faster than VMWare, but the ease of cross-platform use is a huge bonus.
DosBox does the job just fine.
If you're really wedded to the idea of using a fancy-shmancy emulator, go download Suns VirtualBox. It'll install on your "home premium" without problems, and I find it to be a far superior product. Plus the "free" thing is kinda nice.
That's complete bullshit. If you purchased the 32 bit version of Vista, you can go on the Microsoft website and order the 64 bit version for a little more than the cost of shipping. Or you can just buy 64 bit to start with - there's no price difference between the 32 bit and 64 bit editions.
"Hey, honey, have you seen the remote control?"
"Yeah, it's about 20 feet north of the front door!"
Yep .... real useful.
The 20 minutes thing generally refers to passive activities like lectures/speeches. It doesn't apply to activities which require active participation.
90% of people are stupid on occasion. The other 10% are stupid all the time.