Yup. We're a long way away from the ballistically-matched ranging gun.
With engagement distances up to 4000m, and ~2500m being a fairly routine shot, it's hard to imagine a ranging gun with that much reach and that provided enough visible splash to let you know you're on.
All the M1s I've seen and worked with had single-axis sight head mirrors. It adjusted for elevation, but lead compensation moves the sight picture around. If the target - or the tank - changes direction suddenly, the Abrams gunner has to "dump lead" (reset the system), retrack, and re-lase.
Whereas the Leo gunner just keeps tracking with the same sight picture and waits an extra heartbeat for the gun to realign.
Maybe the very latest Abrams finally has a 2-axis mirror and has made it into the 1980s.
Lack of an autoloader isn't really a knock on a tank. Autoloaders tend to be finnicky, and struggle to keep up with the reload speed of a well-motivated 19 year old.
But on top of that, it is really very useful to have that 4th crewman. Tanks need a lot of work to keep operational and the crew commander is frequently off getting orders - having that extra body is a real force enabler.
The sight is mounted on a mirror that can pivot in two axis on good tanks, an one axis on an Abrams. The ballistic computer knows what ammunition is in the breach (a user input - by the loader on good tanks, by the gunner on an Abrams) and so knows the ballistic profile of the round being fired. A slew of other sensors measure crosswinds, barrel droop, and the like. The laser rangefinder provides range, and an angle encoder in the turret slip ring provides rate of turret rotation, which provides a measure of target relative motion.
Gunner tracks target and then lases to get range. The FCS then jumps the gun barrel in both elevation and rotation while the sight mirror jumps back in the other direction(s) to keep the sight picture unchanged. The gunner fires, and the round impacts where the ballistic solution says it should.
From the gunner's perspective, you lay on target, track for a second, then fire the laser and fire the gun in close succession ("lase and blaze") and the round "magically" flies out and hits the target - no matter if you are moving, the target is moving, or both. You can be driving along at 60 km/h and hit a target moving 60 km/h 2500m away on the first shot.
Mind you, you have to account for the Amiga's near-magical ability to run programs an order of magnitude or so more complex than it theoretically should have been capable of doing.
When your Amiga, running a software-based Mac emulator (ShapeShifter) is running a Mac program faster than the native Mac at the same clock speed.. there's some Dark Arts shit going down.
As your neighbor to the south, I REALLY hope you voted NO on Prop 6.
Matty Moran is defending his economy-strangling monopoly on the border crossing bridge to the death. Prop 6 is (I hope) his last gasp at sabotaging the bridge we are trying to build.
What makes shows like the Simpsons and Family Guy funny are all the cultural references. 90% of the material in those shows are references to other works.
If you are not familiar with the material being referenced, then you don't get the joke - or the point being made.
The same is true in literature. If you are not familiar with the English literary canon, then you will miss all the references to it from later derivitive works - from all genres. Science Fiction makes reference to classical literature all the time. Somtimes explicitly (Inferno) but more often times, obliquely.
So far, all the superhero movies have been start-from-scratch, where the movie has to intoduce the hero, tell the origin story, set up a Big Bad to get the hero moving along the path to heroics, etc.
So each superhero movie has been more or less the same as all the rest - change the character, nudge the origin, different baddie - but overall, same formula.
But actual comic books don't do this (very often). When you buy a comic, you already know the hero's backstory - what you are getting is a story featuring that hero.
I postulate that with the superhero movies doing so well - and with so many characters having been introduced to the non-comic-reading public, that it will become possible to do stand-alone movies featuring known characters.
So you could do, for example, Arkham Aslyum (per the graphic novel) where the opening scene is Batman showing up at the front gate and meeting Gordon to be briefed on what is going on inside and why Batman is needed there - without having to show Batty's parents getting murdered, the discovery of the Batcave, the origin of the Batmobile etc etc.
You might have to do a couple of establishment scenes to show how this Batman differs from whatever movie came out last, but that's trivial compared to a full reboot.
The core issue here is that humans are primates. Sure, we are a lot more intelligent and communicate far better than even our nearest evolutionary cousins, but that primate "primal" nature is still very much there.
Every single human institution falls victim to this. Big ideas and lofty goals in the macro are eventually swallowed up by primate social drives in the micro. The institutions that do best and survive the longest are the ones that have effective checks and balances against the primate, or leverage aspects of the primal nature to support the institution.
If you truly want to understand human nature, read "How to Wind Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie, and "Gorillas in the Mist" by Jane Goodall - and compare Dale's common sense and highly astute analysis of human social behavior against those of the gorillas.
And watch the light of understanding come on for pretty much every human social interaction you've ever had over the course of your entire life.
I got a 16Gb the first time they were deeply discounted.
It was a little buggy at first, but the OS2.0 update completely fixed that.
It's blazing fast, multitasks, plays Flash, is a decent form factor, and gets incredible battery life. And now it runs Android apps to (I ported Androku over to it to run my Soundbridge - easy)
For as much as people seem to love throwing rocks at RIM, the Playbook is a great product.
I'm more interested in - man alive, it is repugnant to say this - the "pleasant" parts. The parts that have nothing to do with race or any other key Nazi tropes long proven wrong.
Assuming they exist. He couldn't have gotten every single word wrong, could he?
And please let me reiterate - I am in no way an admirer of Hitler or his philosophy. I am not seeking to celebrate the stuff Hitler got right. I am instead seeking to show that you can make any book look good if you choose your quotes carefully.
Granted - anything Hitler has to say on "race" is going to be completely out to lunch and is pretty much a given to be "bad" stuff.
But if he says something like "farmers need to get their produce to market and an efficient transportation system is a way to make that happen" - well that's true, even if it did come out of Hitler's mouth.
I'd love to see a list of quotes from Mein Kampf that follow a similar pattern - stuff that is unquestionably true, even though the source is pretty much the worst possible source ever.
Slashdot Mirror
The BoxeeBox is a neat little device, with a few flaws that could easily be remedied in software (like a better music player)
I love that it can Samba in to my main server and play .isos
Heh. I knew if I twisted the Yanks' tails I'd get outraged fanboy "'MERICA!" responses.
All y'all are nothing if not predictable.
Yup. We're a long way away from the ballistically-matched ranging gun.
With engagement distances up to 4000m, and ~2500m being a fairly routine shot, it's hard to imagine a ranging gun with that much reach and that provided enough visible splash to let you know you're on.
All the M1s I've seen and worked with had single-axis sight head mirrors. It adjusted for elevation, but lead compensation moves the sight picture around. If the target - or the tank - changes direction suddenly, the Abrams gunner has to "dump lead" (reset the system), retrack, and re-lase.
Whereas the Leo gunner just keeps tracking with the same sight picture and waits an extra heartbeat for the gun to realign.
Maybe the very latest Abrams finally has a 2-axis mirror and has made it into the 1980s.
Lack of an autoloader isn't really a knock on a tank. Autoloaders tend to be finnicky, and struggle to keep up with the reload speed of a well-motivated 19 year old.
But on top of that, it is really very useful to have that 4th crewman. Tanks need a lot of work to keep operational and the crew commander is frequently off getting orders - having that extra body is a real force enabler.
Crew a Leo, and crew a Abrams, and tell me what you think.
I know what I learned by doing so - and the Leo FCS is FAR superior.
The FCS on a tank works mostly the same way.
The sight is mounted on a mirror that can pivot in two axis on good tanks, an one axis on an Abrams. The ballistic computer knows what ammunition is in the breach (a user input - by the loader on good tanks, by the gunner on an Abrams) and so knows the ballistic profile of the round being fired. A slew of other sensors measure crosswinds, barrel droop, and the like. The laser rangefinder provides range, and an angle encoder in the turret slip ring provides rate of turret rotation, which provides a measure of target relative motion.
Gunner tracks target and then lases to get range. The FCS then jumps the gun barrel in both elevation and rotation while the sight mirror jumps back in the other direction(s) to keep the sight picture unchanged. The gunner fires, and the round impacts where the ballistic solution says it should.
From the gunner's perspective, you lay on target, track for a second, then fire the laser and fire the gun in close succession ("lase and blaze") and the round "magically" flies out and hits the target - no matter if you are moving, the target is moving, or both. You can be driving along at 60 km/h and hit a target moving 60 km/h 2500m away on the first shot.
DG
Mind you, you have to account for the Amiga's near-magical ability to run programs an order of magnitude or so more complex than it theoretically should have been capable of doing.
When your Amiga, running a software-based Mac emulator (ShapeShifter) is running a Mac program faster than the native Mac at the same clock speed.. there's some Dark Arts shit going down.
DG
If you haven't tried this phone yet, you really need to see the BB Z10. It provides the absolute best user experience with a phone I've ever had.
Amen, brother.
DG
Maybe he had nothing to say.
DG
...of pretty much every David Weber "Honour Harrington" book ever written.
DG
Hey man, I wrote a TON of enterprise-ready perl code in the late 90s and early 2000s that is still going strong.
Perl is like English - flexible enough to write both Shakespere and "50 Shades of Grey". And it is still my go-to language for fixing stuff quickly.
Yes, there's a lot of really crappy perl out there - but crap is not langauge-dependent.
DG
As your neighbor to the south, I REALLY hope you voted NO on Prop 6.
Matty Moran is defending his economy-strangling monopoly on the border crossing bridge to the death. Prop 6 is (I hope) his last gasp at sabotaging the bridge we are trying to build.
DG
Meh. I have a 3 digit palindrome. And a 2 letter nick. That's hard to top.
DG
Four digits?
N00b
DG
What makes shows like the Simpsons and Family Guy funny are all the cultural references. 90% of the material in those shows are references to other works.
If you are not familiar with the material being referenced, then you don't get the joke - or the point being made.
The same is true in literature. If you are not familiar with the English literary canon, then you will miss all the references to it from later derivitive works - from all genres. Science Fiction makes reference to classical literature all the time. Somtimes explicitly (Inferno) but more often times, obliquely.
DG
6 digits is a "low" userID?
DG
So far, all the superhero movies have been start-from-scratch, where the movie has to intoduce the hero, tell the origin story, set up a Big Bad to get the hero moving along the path to heroics, etc.
So each superhero movie has been more or less the same as all the rest - change the character, nudge the origin, different baddie - but overall, same formula.
But actual comic books don't do this (very often). When you buy a comic, you already know the hero's backstory - what you are getting is a story featuring that hero.
I postulate that with the superhero movies doing so well - and with so many characters having been introduced to the non-comic-reading public, that it will become possible to do stand-alone movies featuring known characters.
So you could do, for example, Arkham Aslyum (per the graphic novel) where the opening scene is Batman showing up at the front gate and meeting Gordon to be briefed on what is going on inside and why Batman is needed there - without having to show Batty's parents getting murdered, the discovery of the Batcave, the origin of the Batmobile etc etc.
You might have to do a couple of establishment scenes to show how this Batman differs from whatever movie came out last, but that's trivial compared to a full reboot.
DG
Hardy har har.
Well played though.
The core issue here is that humans are primates. Sure, we are a lot more intelligent and communicate far better than even our nearest evolutionary cousins, but that primate "primal" nature is still very much there.
Every single human institution falls victim to this. Big ideas and lofty goals in the macro are eventually swallowed up by primate social drives in the micro. The institutions that do best and survive the longest are the ones that have effective checks and balances against the primate, or leverage aspects of the primal nature to support the institution.
If you truly want to understand human nature, read "How to Wind Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie, and "Gorillas in the Mist" by Jane Goodall - and compare Dale's common sense and highly astute analysis of human social behavior against those of the gorillas.
And watch the light of understanding come on for pretty much every human social interaction you've ever had over the course of your entire life.
DG
I got a 16Gb the first time they were deeply discounted.
It was a little buggy at first, but the OS2.0 update completely fixed that.
It's blazing fast, multitasks, plays Flash, is a decent form factor, and gets incredible battery life. And now it runs Android apps to (I ported Androku over to it to run my Soundbridge - easy)
For as much as people seem to love throwing rocks at RIM, the Playbook is a great product.
DG
I have a Playbook too, and it rocks.
Agreed, at $200 it was too good to pass up.
DG
I'm more interested in - man alive, it is repugnant to say this - the "pleasant" parts. The parts that have nothing to do with race or any other key Nazi tropes long proven wrong.
Assuming they exist. He couldn't have gotten every single word wrong, could he?
And please let me reiterate - I am in no way an admirer of Hitler or his philosophy. I am not seeking to celebrate the stuff Hitler got right. I am instead seeking to show that you can make any book look good if you choose your quotes carefully.
DG
Granted - anything Hitler has to say on "race" is going to be completely out to lunch and is pretty much a given to be "bad" stuff.
But if he says something like "farmers need to get their produce to market and an efficient transportation system is a way to make that happen" - well that's true, even if it did come out of Hitler's mouth.
I'd love to see a list of quotes from Mein Kampf that follow a similar pattern - stuff that is unquestionably true, even though the source is pretty much the worst possible source ever.
DG