Nied

Oh yes. While the ASRAAM isn't quite as maneuverable as it's contemporaries like the IRIS-T and AIM-9X it is has a much larger motor and much lower drag meaning it's a lot faster and has much longer ranged. Combine that with an extrememly sensetive seeker head (which it shares with the AIM-9X) and it's easily capable of BVR engagements. It definetly won't win any competions against an AMRAAM or Meteor but it's still BVR.

To be fair that was going to happen no matter who won the competition as Boeing's proposal had a similar remote camera system. Still I don't know if I entirely trust cameras. Seems to me if you're going to be attaching two aircraft in mid air with a rigid peice of one aircraft, and the pump flamable liquid through that part, you don't want someone watching that through a security camera.

I seem to remember that the Indian Navy is planning to build an indigenous carrier as a follow on to the Gorshkov, so they would eventually be able to have 1 ship out on teh ocean near constantly.

SAT time! Railfan is to Trainspotter as Trekker is to Trekkie.

I love that the BDA's excuse is that they would have released a finished format if HD-DVD didn't come out first. They're competing with us it's not fair!

That did come off snarkier than I intended, sorry about that. The point still stands though, I find it hard to beilieve a few Best Buy or Circuit City employees who are hD-DVD die hards are going to so bungle WB's move to Blu-Ray (especially when given how clearly WB claims consumers are going for Blu-Ray).

A choice made by WB which now has to be forced on consumers. Do you not see the difference? Actually I've been format neutral, however given Sony's abhorent business practices I wasn't exactly hoping Blu-Ray would win (and yes I'm well aware that there are more companies than just Sony on the BDA but Sony's been the main driver behind the format). WB being the only format neutral studio is actually a good point in my favor. During the VHS Beta war both formats had full studio support and it came down to consumer choice on which one won. This time it came down to which big studio put out the most successful titles (with two big Disney blockbusters as a Blu-Ray exclusives I'm not surprised the numbers are what they were). Although my criticism would be a little more muted had HD-DVD won (I like it's lack of region encoding and extra DRM cruft) I'd still be making these complaints. Now who's bitter? It's interesting how WB's head worded his answer to the payoff question though, he didn't say no, his exact words were "I wish" which gives quite a bit more wiggle room. You are correct that the payoff rumours haven't been substantiated but I wouldn't exactly be shocked if they were. That's a more plausible scenario but in the end it's still about WB pushing consumers to Blu-Ray, rather then letting it die off from unpopularity as they have claimed.

So WB can't do simultaneous release because some clerk at Best Buy could ruin their entire business strategy? Riiiiight. The simple fact is that if BD really is the clear choice of consumers as WB has been saying then there really wouldn't be any issue with simultaneous release, buyers would be buying Blu and HD-DVD would be going into the bargain bin. Instead WB chose Blu-Ray for the consumer and to enforce that decision they've got to discourage buyers from purchasing HD-DVD.

No need to actively promote HD-DVD, but why actively sabotage it (as they are doing) if they're so certain that consumers have clearly chosen Blu-Ray?

Oddly enough the opposite was the case for me, other than the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and Pixar's catalog all the movies I've been interested in have come out on HD-DVD or both formats (Matrix, Batman, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Army of Darkness, The Big Lebowski, most of Stanley Kubrick's catalog). Whatever, I'm still planning on picking up a dual format player, and if HD-DVD really does die I can grab those titles at fire sale prices!

Ugh. This is why I was hoping Blu-Ray wouldn't win. So now I can by a Blu-Ray disc and be locked into watching that movie on a crappy portable game system, and get locked out of most of interactive content unless I have an overpriced gaming system, all brought to you by the people who gave us the rootkit. Wonderful.

I'm willing to bet that the Indian Air Force is just as unwilling to risk their relatively expensive MKIs against foreign air forces, lest their parliament start wondering why they're buying MKIs instead of more Mig-21 Bisons or upgraded Mig-23s or something.

Yes that's aparently how things have gone in the past few international exercises. Actually the Air Force might handle things the same way the RAF did and not actually have Raptors go up against MKIs in direct combat, but have them work togethere in mixed formations (exactly what the RAF did with their Typhoons).

Oh come on you've gotta have a story to go with that David!

I don't have a response for this, I just wanted to highlight it because it's an awesome turn of phrase. That's actually one of the reasons I liked the UP5000 as opposed to LG's second gen dual format player (that and the price point), it has an ethernet jack built in. It's not quite as convenient as Wi-Fi but considering the fact that I already have a separate ethernet switch set up by my home theater stack for my Wii and satellite box it's not a big issue. Besides, I've yet to see a non-computer Wi-Fi enabled device support the encryption I use on my network anyway. It's less about me having made up my mind than trying out some of the arguments I've made to myself on someone else. After all if I can't convince another person that this is a good idea I'm probably deluding myself. You do make an excellent points about trawling to see if there are any issues before buying, already I've seen some people talking about some disc incompatibility issues and lack of full support for some HD audio codecs. I don't know if those are show stoppers for me (my receiver doesn't support those codecs and none of the incompatible discs are ones I'm interested in seeing) but I'm still looking to see if something more alarming comes up. Hell, if I had made up my mind I wouldn't have posted anything here!

Better than mounting them on the landing gear doors!

It meets BR 1.1 specs. What really had me excited though is the Reon video processor, which apparently does an excellent job up-converting conventional DVDs. Considering the fact that a PS3+A30+HDMI switch (my current set only has one HDMI port) cost nearly as much as the BD5000, and I don't get the stellar processor out of that package (and a lot of headache trying to wedge all that into my current Home theater stack), I thought the extra $50 might make it worth it. I'm getting tired of waiting for someone to "win" the format war and I'd rather support solutions like this since IMHO it's what's going to win the war for consumers (after all dual format drives finally ended the writable DVD war).

According to CNET it's out now with positive reviews, and the pre-release reviews have been quite positive as well.

Aparently the reason they started mounting AMRAAMs on the wingtips of F-16s (other than it looking really cool) is that the missiles had an easier time locking up a target when they were mounted as far out from the centerline as possible.

What's your guy's opinion of this. I'm thinking of blowing some of my Christmas bonus on something and this looks mighty attractive, I'm not interested in buying a PS3 just to get a Blu-Ray player or a 360 for an HD-DVD player (I'm quite happy with my PC and Wii for gaming) so this looks rather attractive, especially since the DVD upscaling is apparently quite good.

That's always been the case. Hell didn't everyone here think all F-35 variants were going to be like that for a while because the X-35 was designed that way? I don't think it will be that big of an issue since A) two of the aircraft it's meant to replace are attack aircraft (AV-8B and GR.7/9) and one of the fighters it's meant to replace (SHAR) doesn't exactly have good rear visibility itself; and B) as someone mentioned the helmet is supposed to solve the rest. The JSF helmet definetly looks like it will be really cool, allowing the pilot to see through the whole airplane with thermal sights (and it looks pretty good when modeled by hot redheads).

Higher quality photos from the F-35B rollout.

Yeah but you're the swear word replacement bot's batty.

That's not a David Hingtgen/TV show pilot joke! On a serious note: does anyone else think that big intake door they used for the production version will make a great sail for a gust to pick up and knock the aircraft over as it's trying to balance itself on a column of thrust?

You know what else? Flaps! that is all.