That's not strictly true - the F-22 has a decent internal carriage capability. It can carry two JDAMs plus four missiles internally. For strategic bombing missions that's plenty. If you want saturation bombing, get yourself a B-52:)
But yes, your general point is correct - expanding it's payload beyond that does tend to lose you the stealth characteristics.
Marvellous. If ever the Russkies start a simulated war, we'll be knocking on the simulated door of the Kremlin in two weeks.
Don't be a smart ass. Simulated as in "everything except pushing the fucking button". Just because you're surrounded by geeks doesn't mean that the word "simulated" always refers to computer simulations.
According to the wiki stats, it'll push mach 2.25.
Of course, the big thing is that it can actually cruise at Mach 1.8, without using afterburners. That makes a massive difference in response time and fuel consumption, since aircraft on afterburners typically use 3-4 times as much fuel as they do without them.
In case anyone didn't notice, the Vietnamese pretty much kicked the USAF's rear.
Well that's a load of horse-shit. Throughout the entire war, the USAF maintained a kill ration of roughly 2:1. The US navy's air-wings had a similar kill ratio initially, but brought it up past 10:1 after the development of the Top Gun academy. I'm not sure where you're getting your ideas wfrom, but you're completely wrong.
The whole needing F-22s if we ever get into a conventional war with a Great Power thing is a canard. Great Powers have nuclear weapons, so conventional wars aren't possible; we send in F-22s and 8 hours later half the planet is glass.
You'll be eating those words when China unveils their brand new designed-in-secret anti-ICBM system.
Besides which, your entire argument is flawed. Even in the current environment it's entirely possible to have limited non-nuclear engagements which do not lead to nuclear war. I've heard your argument used before to try and justify the elimination of nearly all military forces. The idea goes something like:
"Why bother having soldiers when we have Nukes? Who would attack us?"
The problem is that, when the only tool you have is a hammer, you'd better hope every problem is a nail. What happens if a foreign nation decides to seize all your commercial aircraft - do you nuke them? What if they encroach on your coastal waters and scare away your commercial sea-going traffic? What if they just decide to occupy, say, Alaska? Is that a good enough reason to launch? The whole idea behind having a versatile military is that you can deal with each scenario in a reasonable manner, and resolve it with as little force as possible. Having overwhelming force is nice, but it does you no good unless you're crazy enough to use it at the smallest provocation.
I guess this is a good time to be moving on to the F-35, then.
I'm not sure if you're joking, so... the F-22 is superior to the F-35. Two engines instead of one. Larger payload. Stealth capability. There's no comparison. That's why the US was happy to share the F-35 with other nations, while the F-22 was a closely kept secret.
no it wont. it requires extensive upgrades because the RAM or the skin of the aircraft cannot survive a rainstorm. it does not have a working heads up display on the helmet. the canopy blisters and peels with exposure to sunlight. it does not communicate with other aircraft because the electronics are deficient. it requires 44 HOURS of maint for every hour in the air. the raptor is a pile of crap and will eventually be phased out.
I see that you've been reading Pravda again....
Anyone who mods that comment "informative" needs to have their heads examined. It should be clear at first glance that the AC who posted it is a zealot on a personal quest. Now, if anyone has some valid criticism backed by reliable references, I'd love to hear them. So far as I know, the F-22 has had no major issues after the incident in 2007, and has performed beyond all expectations in simulated air-to-air combat exercises.
I just don't see it as reasonable to have free market determine that acceptable safety risk level purely from insurance cost (which, if you read to the beginning of the thread, is effectively what was proposed).
No, I don't think that's what he was proposing. After all, we have to have car insurance but that doesn't mean that car safety standards are controlled by insurance companies. I think he was just saying that it would be a good idea to have nuclear plants privately insured, and that one of the advantages would be that it would create an extra level at which risk factors could be evaluated.
But yeah, if I'm wrong about what he was suggesting and you're right, then I agree with you completely - having corporations determine safety standards would be a horrible idea, especially in an industry in which there's really no competition.
By the way, for a guy who has "I'm NOT an American" in your sig, you sure do assume too much about other people's nationality. Hint: I'm not an American, either.
But GP's proposal was effectively sticking a price tag on the lives of other people, without their consent. He's effectively saying, "I'm going to do something risky that's going to get you killed, but don't worry: if that happens, I'll pay a lot of money to your relatives!".
What do you think car insurance is for?
That's why my insurance company forces me to pay higher premiums if I plan to do much driving in the US - because your courts tend to award more compensation to the relatives of the deceased, so the company is taking a higher risk by ensuring me. If you think they couldn't work out a formula to assess the risk associated with nuke plants, you're just being naive.
Well he didn't mention light water reactors. He just said "one nuclear accident". So, you know, if the Sun goes Nova, that would be a nuclear accident that would make the US uninhabitable...
You're being unfair to the Titanic. In order for it to be a fair comparison, you'd have to have the crew of the Titanic cut hols in all of the interior bulkheads, cut apart all the lifeboats and life-preservers, and then steer the ship at full speed directly into the biggest iceberg they could find. Only then would the Titanic incident be somewhat comparable to the sheer negligence of the Chernobyl technicians.
Try taking ethics. If we followed your slippery slope logic we'd start killing people when they hit retirement age. After all, they'll never again go back to work and 'pay back' their value after they start collecting social security. Same for the mentally retarded, just drown them right?
That example only works if you have socialized health care - and it actually is employed to some extent in countries which have single-tier government controlled health care. Here in Canada we don't kill off old people, we just make sure that the surgery they need is scheduled for, say, 3 years down the road. Since they can't seek medical attention privately in Canada, many of them end up going to the US and paying for their treatment out of pocket. I'm not sure what we'll do once Obama turns your medical system into a socialist paradise. Probably travel to Cuba, instead.
It's not just about fatalities, though. How many billions of dollars are wasted every year due to traffic accidents? How many people hospitalized for months at a time? How many man-hours are lost by companies? The total impact on society is much greater than just 1,000 deaths.
I'm sorry, my point wasn't clear... The LRA is at the point of fading into irrelevancy... even during the peal of their terror campaign, I never feared or had a fear that the LRA would have lasting global social impact. Not the way I feel the fundamentalists of any stripe can and do.
I get ya. I just don't share your fear. I'm certainly apprehensive about the evangelicals, and I take every opportunity to fight them, but I don't believe that they're a serious threat. It would take decades of neglect on our part, and some serious brainwashing of mainstream Christians, for Christianity to become the threat that Islam is today.
As for the rest of your comment, I would have modded you insightful if I could have. We clearly share many of the same views - I just don't share your fear of Christianity, and I think people who feel the same way that you do are a very small minority. We all have some apprehension about what the fundies are doing, but few of us take it to the same extreme as you.
"Do you believe in (a) god(s)?" implies that you have formed a basis for a belief one way or the other.
Wrong. There is no "one way or the other", the question only asks for a single answer. I'm not asking "Do you believe that god exists, or do you believe that he doesn't exist". You're creating an alternative where none was implied. Being an atheist doesn't mean that you believe no gods exist - it just means that you haven't seen enough evidence to convince you that they DO exist. If you are asked "Do you believe in god?" and your answer is anything other than "yes" then you are an atheist.
The right answer to "have you stopped beating your wife yet?" is not "yes" or "no". The right answer is to answer a question unasked.
What a horrid analogy.
The phrase "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" implies that you have been beating your wife in the past. In order to answer it accurately, you need to address the underlying assumption.
The phrase "Do you believe in (a) god(s)?" implies nothing, therefore it can be answered directly. You may have to determine which god(s) the questioner is referring to, but otherwise it's just a yes or no answer.
Really? Because I've spent a lot of time in Northern Uganda... children would walk kilometers... so they wouldn't be kidnapped to turn into child soldiers.
Uh... yeah... that would be why I mentioned the LRA specifically, and why I said that they're the exception. Did you not read that part of my comment?
Yesterday, here on Slashdot, I made a joke about the purpose of gas giants. People are still flaming me about my "anti-Christian bigotry."
Yes, I remember your joke. I thought it was rather amusing. I'm not sure why you think you should be immune from flaming, though. Half the jokes I make result in similar responses.
When I was in the Army, we had respect for each others' religious beliefs, even though we still made fun of everyone's beliefs to their faces. Out here, I'm the enemy because I find the Fox News crowd to have disturbing implications.
No, here you're the enemy because this is a forum for debate.
In the army we had more important things to worry about, and making fun of each other was a way to build camaraderie. Plus soldiers aren't as touchy as civilians - when your job description includes being the target for bullets and explosives, having people hurling words at you doesn't seem to be very important any more. Slashdot is a completely different environment - you shouldn't take their animosity so personally. The whole point of this place is to discuss, disseminate, disagree and dispute. Getting upset when people use the site for it's intended purpose is just silly.
Well YOU might be happy with letting global Troll populations starve to death, but I actually care about the genetic diversity of our planet. We might not be able to prevent a large-scale die-off, but at least we can preserve enough specimens to start breeding programs in a handful of zoos.
I dare you to say the same thing, except insert Muslim prophet's name instead. It is probably more accurate as well;)
Ok: "Mohammed titty fucking Mohammed on a pogo-stick, that is a draconian law. Its 2010 and some people still long for the middle ages."
I dunno, it just doesn't have the same ring to it somehow.
Christians are just wimps, and easy pickings. And yet people fear them more than the Muslims.
Nobody fears Christians any more. Well, ok, the LRA are an exception, but IN GENERAL, nobody fears Christians any more. We're just worried about government enforcement of religions of any kind. If theists had any common sense, they'd be just as opposed to it.
'Agnostic' doesn't mean "I don't know whether to believe in the Christian god" (as your comment re: Zeus appears to imply). Agnosticism can mean either "I don't know whether there's a god or not" or "I believe it's unknowable whether there's a god or not".
That's great, except that neither of those sentences answers the question "Do you believe in god". As such, you're NOT picking a side - you're just giving an answer to a question we didn't ask.
No. You're an idiot, and I would have modded you "flamebait" also, despite the fact that I'm an outspoken critic of religion. Your comment is worthless as it provides no information and does nothing to add to the conversation - it serves only to provoke and insult.
It is. Cheaper. To keep people healthy. Than it is. To treat their. Unnecessary. Emergencies.
Hey, finally a straightforward statement!
Unfortunately you forgot to add the "[citation needed]" tag. For some reason every time I talk to a person who makes that claim, they fail to provide any evidence to support it. Weird, huh?
Slashdot Mirror
That's not strictly true - the F-22 has a decent internal carriage capability. It can carry two JDAMs plus four missiles internally. For strategic bombing missions that's plenty. If you want saturation bombing, get yourself a B-52 :)
But yes, your general point is correct - expanding it's payload beyond that does tend to lose you the stealth characteristics.
Don't be a smart ass. Simulated as in "everything except pushing the fucking button". Just because you're surrounded by geeks doesn't mean that the word "simulated" always refers to computer simulations.
According to the wiki stats, it'll push mach 2.25.
Of course, the big thing is that it can actually cruise at Mach 1.8, without using afterburners. That makes a massive difference in response time and fuel consumption, since aircraft on afterburners typically use 3-4 times as much fuel as they do without them.
Well that's a load of horse-shit. Throughout the entire war, the USAF maintained a kill ration of roughly 2:1. The US navy's air-wings had a similar kill ratio initially, but brought it up past 10:1 after the development of the Top Gun academy. I'm not sure where you're getting your ideas wfrom, but you're completely wrong.
You'll be eating those words when China unveils their brand new designed-in-secret anti-ICBM system.
Besides which, your entire argument is flawed. Even in the current environment it's entirely possible to have limited non-nuclear engagements which do not lead to nuclear war. I've heard your argument used before to try and justify the elimination of nearly all military forces. The idea goes something like:
"Why bother having soldiers when we have Nukes? Who would attack us?"
The problem is that, when the only tool you have is a hammer, you'd better hope every problem is a nail. What happens if a foreign nation decides to seize all your commercial aircraft - do you nuke them? What if they encroach on your coastal waters and scare away your commercial sea-going traffic? What if they just decide to occupy, say, Alaska? Is that a good enough reason to launch? The whole idea behind having a versatile military is that you can deal with each scenario in a reasonable manner, and resolve it with as little force as possible. Having overwhelming force is nice, but it does you no good unless you're crazy enough to use it at the smallest provocation.
I'm not sure if you're joking, so ... the F-22 is superior to the F-35. Two engines instead of one. Larger payload. Stealth capability. There's no comparison. That's why the US was happy to share the F-35 with other nations, while the F-22 was a closely kept secret.
Nonsense. Israel has sold US technology ... to India, in order to keep Pakistan in check. How in the world does that make them "the worst offender"?
I see that you've been reading Pravda again ....
Anyone who mods that comment "informative" needs to have their heads examined. It should be clear at first glance that the AC who posted it is a zealot on a personal quest. Now, if anyone has some valid criticism backed by reliable references, I'd love to hear them. So far as I know, the F-22 has had no major issues after the incident in 2007, and has performed beyond all expectations in simulated air-to-air combat exercises.
No, I don't think that's what he was proposing. After all, we have to have car insurance but that doesn't mean that car safety standards are controlled by insurance companies. I think he was just saying that it would be a good idea to have nuclear plants privately insured, and that one of the advantages would be that it would create an extra level at which risk factors could be evaluated.
But yeah, if I'm wrong about what he was suggesting and you're right, then I agree with you completely - having corporations determine safety standards would be a horrible idea, especially in an industry in which there's really no competition.
Well then you should put it in your sig ;)
What do you think car insurance is for?
That's why my insurance company forces me to pay higher premiums if I plan to do much driving in the US - because your courts tend to award more compensation to the relatives of the deceased, so the company is taking a higher risk by ensuring me. If you think they couldn't work out a formula to assess the risk associated with nuke plants, you're just being naive.
Well he didn't mention light water reactors. He just said "one nuclear accident". So, you know, if the Sun goes Nova, that would be a nuclear accident that would make the US uninhabitable ...
You're being unfair to the Titanic. In order for it to be a fair comparison, you'd have to have the crew of the Titanic cut hols in all of the interior bulkheads, cut apart all the lifeboats and life-preservers, and then steer the ship at full speed directly into the biggest iceberg they could find. Only then would the Titanic incident be somewhat comparable to the sheer negligence of the Chernobyl technicians.
That example only works if you have socialized health care - and it actually is employed to some extent in countries which have single-tier government controlled health care. Here in Canada we don't kill off old people, we just make sure that the surgery they need is scheduled for, say, 3 years down the road. Since they can't seek medical attention privately in Canada, many of them end up going to the US and paying for their treatment out of pocket. I'm not sure what we'll do once Obama turns your medical system into a socialist paradise. Probably travel to Cuba, instead.
Or they need to make sure that hormonal teenagers don't get a drivers license. I'm not a big fan of forcing women into Burqas.
It's not just about fatalities, though. How many billions of dollars are wasted every year due to traffic accidents? How many people hospitalized for months at a time? How many man-hours are lost by companies? The total impact on society is much greater than just 1,000 deaths.
I get ya. I just don't share your fear. I'm certainly apprehensive about the evangelicals, and I take every opportunity to fight them, but I don't believe that they're a serious threat. It would take decades of neglect on our part, and some serious brainwashing of mainstream Christians, for Christianity to become the threat that Islam is today.
As for the rest of your comment, I would have modded you insightful if I could have. We clearly share many of the same views - I just don't share your fear of Christianity, and I think people who feel the same way that you do are a very small minority. We all have some apprehension about what the fundies are doing, but few of us take it to the same extreme as you.
Wrong. There is no "one way or the other", the question only asks for a single answer. I'm not asking "Do you believe that god exists, or do you believe that he doesn't exist". You're creating an alternative where none was implied. Being an atheist doesn't mean that you believe no gods exist - it just means that you haven't seen enough evidence to convince you that they DO exist. If you are asked "Do you believe in god?" and your answer is anything other than "yes" then you are an atheist.
What a horrid analogy.
The phrase "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" implies that you have been beating your wife in the past. In order to answer it accurately, you need to address the underlying assumption.
The phrase "Do you believe in (a) god(s)?" implies nothing, therefore it can be answered directly. You may have to determine which god(s) the questioner is referring to, but otherwise it's just a yes or no answer.
You're comparing apples and hand-grenades.
Uh ... yeah ... that would be why I mentioned the LRA specifically, and why I said that they're the exception. Did you not read that part of my comment?
Yes, I remember your joke. I thought it was rather amusing. I'm not sure why you think you should be immune from flaming, though. Half the jokes I make result in similar responses.
No, here you're the enemy because this is a forum for debate.
In the army we had more important things to worry about, and making fun of each other was a way to build camaraderie. Plus soldiers aren't as touchy as civilians - when your job description includes being the target for bullets and explosives, having people hurling words at you doesn't seem to be very important any more. Slashdot is a completely different environment - you shouldn't take their animosity so personally. The whole point of this place is to discuss, disseminate, disagree and dispute. Getting upset when people use the site for it's intended purpose is just silly.
Well YOU might be happy with letting global Troll populations starve to death, but I actually care about the genetic diversity of our planet. We might not be able to prevent a large-scale die-off, but at least we can preserve enough specimens to start breeding programs in a handful of zoos.
Ok: "Mohammed titty fucking Mohammed on a pogo-stick, that is a draconian law. Its 2010 and some people still long for the middle ages."
I dunno, it just doesn't have the same ring to it somehow.
Nobody fears Christians any more. Well, ok, the LRA are an exception, but IN GENERAL, nobody fears Christians any more. We're just worried about government enforcement of religions of any kind. If theists had any common sense, they'd be just as opposed to it.
That's great, except that neither of those sentences answers the question "Do you believe in god". As such, you're NOT picking a side - you're just giving an answer to a question we didn't ask.
No. You're an idiot, and I would have modded you "flamebait" also, despite the fact that I'm an outspoken critic of religion. Your comment is worthless as it provides no information and does nothing to add to the conversation - it serves only to provoke and insult.
Hey, finally a straightforward statement!
Unfortunately you forgot to add the "[citation needed]" tag. For some reason every time I talk to a person who makes that claim, they fail to provide any evidence to support it. Weird, huh?
Either you really like Palin, or you're massively understating the importance of the giants.