noxious

They can't compete with MiG, they're under the same roof, one big family, sharing engineers, assembly plants, etc The Russian government has had them running as one unit (Mig and Sukhoi) for quite a few years now iirc

No, that was in October 1990. Last lowering of the Soviet Flag, official dissolution of the Soviet Union. I cheated

Definitely a yes on the first question. MS did a very good job on the free versions, with the caveat that they can't be used for commercial work (iirc) and thus some good third party tools don't work with the Express editions. If you get the whole shebang, you have all the compilers supported, if you get the C/C++ package, you only have the C/C++ compiler, ditto with the C# package. You can choose what to install or not at setup time. C is not much like Pascal, but that said, shouldn't be that foreign. In the C family of language (C/C++/Objective C to name those), you can work quite close to the metal, and do manual management of memory, while Pascal was intended as a learning language if I remember correctly (it's been a very long time since I used the latter). C# is not really part of that family of language, beyond some syntactic resemblances, as it runs in a virtual machine, like Java and other modern high level languages. Plethora of online texts and intros on all those languages, as well as plenty of example code in the form of tutorials not too mention the plethora of open source programs out there that can serve as learning examples (of both what to do and not what to do while coding, but i digress ) Hope that helps !

The Harpoon 3 Mac version has not been updated in a long time and there are no plans to bring it up to date. I expect it will run on Lion but I have not tested it. You might try contacting Don Gilman aka Uncle Harpoon . Make sure to post back your findings! Also, since Macs now run on Intel hardware (and iirc, Lion dropped support for PPC cpus), you can either run a Virtual Machine running Windows at more than decent performance for either Harpoon games (and other PC games, depending on your hardware), or even dual boot into a windows partition if you're tech savy and get native performance from your Mac, through bootcamp and iirc, possibly other dual booting solutions. That will allow you to play the latest and greatest in both versions of Harpoon (ANW and Commander's Edition), and thus have access to the latest DBs and scenarios Come to think of it, doesn't one of the regulars here already do that ? If that's the case, share your experience and help the new guy. Cheers !!

Snow capped mountains, Western saddled horsies, Good friends, good times, priceless. Kind of jealous there, haven't rode or spent enough time in the country in way too long (except a few one day bouldering excursions over the past couple summers, which were spent giving blisters and scratches to feet, knees, hands and elbows doing climbing routes way above my grade, hehe ) That looked like one amazing trip by the looks on the little gang. Who took the pic ? Guide ? Cheers ! P.S : Hi all, don't post much nowadays, but I still lurk, pretty much daily.

And how dirty bio-diesel really is, without going into the energy waste to make it come about... And I've been advocating "green" for 20+ years, and still think properly managed nuclear power is the way to go if we want to cut on some of the most pressing problems of humanity, among them the direct correlation between hunger and energy : research the real cost of your 1500-2000 calories diet in the US, between 10k and a 100k calories per person per 1000 calories consumed, depending on sources, vegetarian, omnivorous or full on carnivore doesn't matter I'll counter Three Mile Island with France : slighlty more than 80% of their power comes from nuclear fission, they also take care of the waste of a lot of other nuclear using EC powers and they haven't had a single, serious incident in 40 years. You might also want to research the obfuscated chemical incidents in Italy, including one from a soap plant which released dioxine in the atmosphere (yeah, the lethal agent in Agent Orange) Makes a few radioactive russian containers seem really minor, compared to the effects of nuclear weapon testing in Kazhaktan : genocide we use to call it (and not the first time Great Russians try to annihilate the Kazakhs) Nuclear power is, for good or worse, our most efficient mass energy transformation process, bar none. Pretty obvious why that is so, if you know physics just a bit

Yes, going to get back at it, and release something asap. No dates, 'though

Sea buoys parts ? Nah. Torpedo warheads ? Shaped Charge, big ones (I think one is right to say there is a building truss in the picture) What are they ? Or do we get hints ?

I run the SE on a old 2000 Pro workstation of mine, and log in remotely from my vista64 laptop using VNC. There is another alternative to VMWare and VirtualPC (which I have in an old, PowerPC version for Mac pre-X from before MS bought it ) : Virtual Box, which can even support 3d acceleration of games. http://www.virtualbox.org/ It's free, supports vista64, is developed by Sun (makers of Java if you don't know), and can use VMWare images if I remember correctly

Okay, V1/V2 engines ? Can't get Pennemunde out of my head for some reason when I look at that pic.

Okay, joke answer : toxic waste barrels, with construction/signalization cones topped by American WW2 helmets </joke> Very old and decrepit early TACAN antennas ? (nope, not that)

Pennemunde, V1 or V2 warheads

As much as I'm not a fan of our current Canuck administration (wasn't a fan of the previous one, or the one before, or the one before that, all the way back to my birth in 1970 ), I have to say that as time goes by, I have more and more respect for Mr McKay as Minister of Defense. That's all (and that is the shiniest endorsement you'll ever see me give a Conservative, errh, make that any federal politician in this day and age )

Tsk, tsk, Brad. It's true, but to be fair, I think us the Canucks are the only ones who don't play that game so much (and I might be sooo wrong, 'cause we're also one of the more discrete NATO partners in showing off our military "might") And to let's give the French their dues : it's real politik, they're not as hypocritical regarding their "friends" as other nations out there... Hint : no nation has friends, only interests... (see the still maintained as of the 1990s, plans by the US Army for the 90 mins complete invasion of Canada, from Fort Drum, NY : Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto occupied within 2 hours. Plans date back to the 30s, if you're curious. Unearthed by CBC/SRC in the mid-90s, and explained away as contingency plans that have to be maintained up to date by USA brass, hehe) Btw, I don't have a problem with our neighbours having such contingency plans, I wish and hope we have some of the same, in case we need to intervene for any reason, close to home. Some might say the US are the ultimate champs when it comes to that game, but they also have more means to do it than trailing friendlies, or not firing up the Rafale's systems during Red Flag So much so, that certain navies always blame US subs first when incidents happen I would not, I'm more of a realist than that. I say, only the Canucks play nice, the rest all spy on each other, sniff each other's "capabilities" (lol) and pretend they're friends for ever

Presented in that light, I think the planners mistook the DDG-1000 for something they had or could have in their arsenal for a lot cheaper : A diesel/electric/AIP submarine with submerged ASM/SSM (and why not SAM) launching capabilities. Use of cheap, buoyant, wire-controlled digital optics also come to mind, a variant on the no conventional periscopes on the upcoming Brit subs, which use hull and tower mounted cams, iirc : let camera + buoyancy frame leave the submarine, tethered by power/fiber optic cable, rises to the surface (or stays submerged for underwater filming...) could give multiple sets of eyes to submerged subs, both under and over the surface. Plus digital processing, mostly in software (so you still have access to the raw data from the hw) and does its job for a fraction of the cost If to boot, there is barely any metal in the cams, some anechoic coating : you get the picture, neh ? By design, it often operates alone, it's much less obvious to eyes, etc. My sarcasm and cynicism for today. Seriously, planning should think about giving the capability to improvise as well as juryrig/modify equipment in the field. Easier if it's cheap and mostly off the shelf... The current crop of civilian developed UAV (U*V of all kinds actually) gives credence to this. Edit : bunch of stuff added, including little bit on cheap optics...

11 bits per annex, minus 0 that has special meaning ? Don't tell me you're doing segmented memory pointer like stuff, are you ? In it's those situations, you see how old the foundation is. I salute you for loving this code like you do

I applaud the move : less headaches for you to maintain the list of privileged Ones And yeah, more people !!

I think the Canadian pilots who sneakily died testing the faulty tail of the F-18 while believing they were flying production planes on patrol would disagree it's just the Russians So would the US airmen who shared the same fate as those Canucks We just don't hear about the test pilot crashing, or didn't because it was/is restricted/classified, but if the opposition or competition experiments the same problems, we make it front page news New planes crash, whatever countries field them. And don't be too quick to disregard the Russian's technical abilities : they now have money to retain (well, and other techniques) brain power, which in the math/logic/comp sci department they are in the top echelon, always have been. What they didn't have during the Cold War, among other procurement problems, is cheap access to miniaturized electronics. They do now. They fielded better planes than the West in certain generations while lagging in electronics and material procurement. Even the field, add the Indians (another great source of math brains) and you have a puzzle that shouldn't be ignored That said, who knows what the next year has in store for the Russian air force ?

Doh, apologies all, got confused with other threads and thought kcdusk wanted paper rules refs... Oooops

Paper rules ? 5nm, see 6.3.3.3

Thank you. You have a knack for writing solid articles. I hope you keep at it, Cheers !!

Too often folks forget about the lawyers on the other side of frivolous claims, fighting against them. And, notably, when they do win, its the juries of your "peers" that grant them. Touché, and zing

Yep. From Aviation Week's ARES Blog: Impressive footage to boot, even the gun : found it very interesting to see the spread of shells when doing point targeting. Exactly the video I had in mind when I posted, but couldn't find the naval blog article I had found it in (I have close to a 100 articles to catch up on in Google Reader, and that's just the Naval Analysis category ) Love the Maverick like EO rocket view. Wouldn't want to be the dudes in meeting or hiding inside the house... In case I wasn't clear : I have no qualms in saying that I can respect the right of the Palestinian, Hamas or not, to "fight back". That's a given, not only a right, but a survival instinct. That said, I also certainly respect and understand that Israel is doing what has to be done, in as much as humane way as possible. That doesn't mean there won't be SNAFUs, or special ops/wet work won't happen : it's a war, people fight, and alas, also die. Incidentally, most Israeli military casualties so far have been from friendly fire... Again, what is it with this pervasive David against Goliath syndrome ? Hamas targets civilians. Israel responds with a conventional campaign, taking care to communicate with UN and other agencies. Now, if targets happened to be in UN compounds because the people in charge look the other way, well, there is an expression about making your bed and lying in it I don't believe for a second the IDF targeted UN compounds just to "terrorize" or give a lesson to the UN honchos. There is even footage of shells coming out of such a compound on the CBC a few days ago : rocket eye view while it's homing in on target and you clearly see rockets or something coming out of the compound. And really, I don't think they were civilian fireworks somehow... Now, I think more might be done to get the civilians out, but collectively they haven't shown much of a will to cooperate since Hamas took charge, and it would be hard to filter people on the way out while the fighting is going on. Maybe a 24 hour truce, with checkpoints where people can opt out, without weapons, or much baggage. If they stay in... Might sound harsh, but I'll counter that no one is pointing out that Israel could have conventionally (no need for NBC) wiped out the whole population by practising total war and again, shows restraint by not doing so ? As you all probably know, I call myself unaligned politically, but I'm fully aware that the sum of my beliefs tends to put me on the left. Except with the leftists, as I think I mentioned before, who call me a fascist or reactionary conservative, or any other of a thousand expletives, including "sellout" from people who know me but refuse to see we're surrounded by both wilful and unconscious propaganda. Sorry, just not set in stone, and will never apologize for changing my views, or amending them And doing public rallies with nothing beyond doesn't count as activism or trying to change things in my book. Note : I'm not advocating riots or revolutionary behaviour instead, far from it. Just that rallies and manifestations play into the hands of the powers that be by providing a relatively benign safety valve to public outcry, thus preventing more pressing social problems, or further thought and action on the topic at hand. Most Western activists only talk and do rallies, actually taking no concrete steps to change things. Now, bring on the hate if you have to

A 5-10 sudden change is enough to transform a trap into a real crash. Most of the age of sails fighting and manoeuvres were done in what we would call a brown/green environment nowadays. Not blue water fighting, for obvious reasons (armadas sailing the ocean tended to arrive in little groups, if at all) I don't live by the ocean, but live on an island in the middle of a gigantic river : I tell you the winds in the Old Port or along Notre Dame street along the Port change like crazy, sometimes instantly. I've done both my share of sailing on water and in the air (gliders), as well as small prop planes, and you're really underestimating wind