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SchizophrenicMC

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  1. SchizophrenicMC
    Michelin tires on a fighter aircraft, yeesh. Actually, seriously, QR codes are a great idea for this stuff. You can pack a ton more data into them than standard bar codes, which is great for the long part numbers and serials on aircraft. Scan it in and you're done. Total cost: frakk all.
  2. SchizophrenicMC
    There is nothing quite so great as owning your dream car. The pay from this new job at IBM cannot start rolling in soon enough.
  3. SchizophrenicMC
  4. SchizophrenicMC
    This year there have been 7 deadly airshow incidents, of which 4 were European, 1 was Russian, and the other 2 were American. (One of the American incidents was the death of a parachutist) Just saying. I actually used to know a guy who was paralyzed after getting himself into an airshow accident. It was totally his fault, but Jim Cavanaugh paid for his medical bills anyway, because he was flying one of Jim's planes at the time, and Jim felt bad about the whole situation. Yes, there are a great many overeager pilots. But they do seem to cluster in Europe. Most American airshow incidents are caused by mechanical failure at inopportune moments. Even the B-52 crash there was due in part to a 10-knot tailwind. It seems more European crashes happen because of overconfident pilots who put their planes into irrecoverable situations. Air France 296 comes to mind. It just seems like a lot of this could have been avoided if people would stick to the 500' AGL minimum altitude for European airshows.
  5. SchizophrenicMC
    The real problem is because European airshow pilots never follow the rules for airshow flight, especially those regarding altitude. They got cocky and brought it on themselves.
  6. SchizophrenicMC
  7. SchizophrenicMC
    I think drones are a much more fun way to kill children in BFE. Cheaper, too. Fewer losses on our side if things go tits-up. Makes the war easier to sell. Especially because now materiel losses don't necessary equate to human losses on our end, which means you can give even more funding to the military industrial complex to build stuff, and man we do love that in America. We even get people suggesting that's the best way to prop up the economy, because hey- it worked twice before. Total war only works when your enemy is uniformed, or led by a nation so powerful it commands every last man, woman, and child to fight. Even in that last case, you're probably still going to commit some serious crimes against humanity, and that's no good. Unfortunately, the type of war we have now isn't the kind where you can just draft half the country and drop some exploding pickles on a jungle in Asia for 10 years before you give up because carpet-bombing bumfrakks abroad isn't a sustainable or effective strategy. This kind of war is surgical. The enemy we have now doesn't have industrial centers. They don't have capitols or deeply fortified military bases. They don't have a uniform code, they don't have a well-defined chain of command, they don't have a head that you can cut off. The only way they can be defeated is ideologically. Because if you just indiscriminately bomb the vast tracts of land they've holed up in, you'll incite so many civilian casualties at so much economic cost to yourself that not only will you breed their next generation of soldiers, but you'll be broke when they raise arms. War hasn't fundamentally changed- it's still just a conflict of causes with bloodshed involved- but the way we effect that bloodshed has changed dramatically since the phalanx-line days of Big Al and his Macedonian toy barn. You wouldn't set up a firing line today. That's just begging to incur casualties. 150 years ago that was literally the only way to fight a ground war. You wouldn't send troops into battle backed up by horse-riding troops with a minimum of equipment. Just 100 years ago that was the only way to fight a war. As technology changes, so too do tactics, and those tactics have to suit the technology available to both sides, managing advantage and disadvantage carefully, in order to be effective. Tactics fall by the wayside as they get replaced with newer, more effective ones, that match the zeitgeist. Just as the 2-rank phalanx is no longer suitable in modern combat, the military tactics that won WW2 and lost the Vietnam war are no longer effective and should be put to bed and replaced with new tactics that more effectively utilize the technological advantage we hold over our enemies, in order to fundamentally tear down the ideology that bonds them together beyond the bounds of national borders.
  8. SchizophrenicMC
    There's a very Hiroyuki Sawano quality to it, but fair enough. I don't think there's ever been a Gundam series without good music.
  9. SchizophrenicMC
    AK Interactive TruMetal wax-based metalizer paint. Relatively cheap, easy enough to use, gives a realistic enough effect.
  10. SchizophrenicMC
    Modern tactics are contingent on high-altitude flight and ordnance deployment. They don't like low-altitude ops. And they seem to be breaking away from the top-speed tactics of the 70s. Neither Gen5 fighter's published top speed is as high as the Gen4s they're meant to replace. Their range is supposed to be greater, though, and there's no getting around the better efficiency of their engines. Supercruise is arguably more useful than VMax above Mach 2.5. Assuming that stuff is all working. I don't know if it is. I mean this is the F-35 after all. There is also the matter that it's more fuel efficient to fly at high altitude, and it gives you a distinct energy advantage if enemy forces do happen to get a bead on you. Especially aerial assets. Low-altitude flight is only really advantageous when attacking fortifications that rely on manual tracking. Anything with modern automation, and anything missile-based made since the Gulf War, is going to be able to make you not fly anymore today. And there's no getting around the fact that jets are noisy and, even if you could make them invisible to radar, you can't much avoid populations where people who might radio forward positions except by flying too high for them to hear and see. So I can understand the tactics. I can even understand moving away from the A-10, to be honest. Anything that low and slow is going to be vulnerable to MANPAD, especially if it's as big and visible as an A-10. Sure it's durable, but it was designed to accept anti-air rounds and flak, not missiles. Not a lot of people filling garbage cans with scrap and gunpowder anymore, sad to say. I still don't think the F-35 is the right plane for the job, but I can understand retiring the 40-year-old A-10 for being old and incompatible with modern tactics. Actually I'd expect more unmanned aircraft to fill those roles. I mean, we've already replaced the B-52 with drones for the role of Generating Maximum Civilian Collateral.
  11. SchizophrenicMC
    I'm still not all there on the story and designs, but that music- is that Sawano?
  12. SchizophrenicMC
    USA! USA! USA! USA!
  13. SchizophrenicMC
    Mostly, the enemy has fewer tanks, scuds, and aircraft now.
  14. SchizophrenicMC
    I'm going to wager Gripen, because the Typhoon is expensive, and the Gripen was good enough to replace the Viggen.
  15. SchizophrenicMC
    TL;DR
  16. SchizophrenicMC
    It's because you're a complete spanner.
  17. SchizophrenicMC
    UGH IT'S NOT SCREEN ACCURATE AT ALL.
  18. SchizophrenicMC
    DISREGARD OTHER AIRCRAFT, ALL GLORY TO CONCORDE
  19. SchizophrenicMC
    $500 is tight. I'll say, you don't want to go with Intel's onboard graphics processing, especially not if you're going to be doing rendering. For that matter, I'm not sold on R7 or NVidia Quadro. You'll be better off with a last-gen 6900 series card on a tight budget. I did a quick bit of throwing cheap-ish name-brand components together on Newegg, and I got a decent rig together for a little over $550. You could save some cash by changing to off-brand stuff, but I was trying to get the best bang-for-buck performance I could put together on the cheap. Actually you could get that price into the $500 range if you abandoned the idea of having a case to put everything in. I think if you were really stuck on a prebuilt machine, that Dell Azrael posted is a good starting place. I'm not a big fan of i3 CPUs, but if you're just doing Illustrator, you probably won't run into too many problems. Go for the open-box $340 version and nab this Sapphire Radeon HD6970 with 2GB of VRAM for $87 after a $10 rebate. That should keep you under budget. Yes it's an old style of card, but it was a flagship card not too long ago, and the price is right.
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  21. SchizophrenicMC
    What we do is we don't worry about it, because the quickest way to a powerful, globalized country's heart isn't by deploying ordnance, it's by enacting ordinance. Impose economic sanctions and trade embargoes in response to hostile action. The pen, truly, is mightier than the sword. Hit your opponent right in the economy. Especially when that opponent is like China, and relies entirely upon exporting goods to generate enough money in their economy to provide even the most basic needs. China has passed the tipping point, where they're no longer agriculturally self-sufficient. Cut off their ability to pay for food imports and, well, look at North Korea. For that matter, China is investing heavily in Western (particularly American) designs for nuclear power generation, to provide the absolutely enormous amount of energy their country needs as they wean themselves off the coal that is killing their environment and their people, slowly and expensively. They still have to grandstand so other nations (and their own people) take them seriously, but they really cannot afford to piss off the West. They might make some power plays with boats in a couple of local seas, but don't expect an outright attack or invasion. They'd get cut off from the teat so quickly it'd squirt them in the eye. This is a very different world from the 1940s, and overwhelming force is in all likelihood not the best option, especially when facing a nuclear armed nation that needs your cash more than you need its junk. I don't worry about China. I worry a little bit about Russia. I definitely worry about adversaries who don't fly a national flag. Borderless groups who cluster around an idea- those are the dangerous ones. You can ruin a nation in too many ways to count, but ideas are pervasive. And the people who subscribe to those ideas such that they would carry out violent acts in the name thereof can be anybody, nondescript, hiding in plain sight until the moment of the attack. Even more worrisome than that is the impossibility of finding a balance between securing a nation against those adversaries, and maintaining the freedom and liberty that makes a nation worth existing. Ever wonder how the Orwellian Nightmare starts? With the words, "Well, I've got nothing to hide."
  22. SchizophrenicMC
    I've got friends in some areas of California reporting $4.70/gal ($1.24/l) for regular 87 octane. (That's $1.68 AUS per liter) I filled up today for $2.62 a gallon of 93 octane. ($.94 AUS per liter) Regular 87 is $2.22/gal at that station at the moment.
  23. SchizophrenicMC
    Well, it's easier to stomach here in Dallas, Texas. Even Premium unleaded (93 octane) is inside $2.75 a gallon. (~1 AUD/liter) The niner here is actually an upgrade in fuel economy, since it gets 15mpg in mixed driving (over my Orvis' 11mpg). (15l/100km and 21l/100km respectively) I'd hate to live in California right now.
  24. SchizophrenicMC
    Both mine. Both 8s. The one in front is a 1998 5.9 Limited. The premium-unleaded-sucking granddaddy SRT swansong for the first-gen Grand Cherokee. It could do 0-60 in 6.7s when it was new, according to a test by MotorTrend. And with its 127mph top speed, it was the fastest SUV of its time. Those hood vents are factory and functional. And it has 10-speaker audio and every Limited option and then some. The one in back is my 1997 Orvis Edition. Think Ford Eddie Bauer and you're close. It has green leather, a factory-installed 1-inch lift, tow hooks, and skid plates. That one has 91,400 miles, which is why I bought this 200k mile Niner to daily drive. FUEL ECONOMY IS FOR LOSERS. This 5.9 Limited is my 5th Grand Cherokee, and my second niner. I had a 6-cylinder Laredo at one point. Never again.
  25. SchizophrenicMC
    It's Gawker Media, did anyone expect accuracy? And, honestly, SEED wasn't that bad. I just watched it again a couple weeks ago. My bad impressions of it had made it up to be this horrible whiny teenager show, when really it's just a more pacifistic take on 0079, until the final arc when there are shark-jumping Space Hitlers on both sides. I'd say it's better than Wing, if only because it uses less stock footage than Wing. (Which had an equally poorly-written story, but which holds up in the US only because of nostalgia value, being the first stateside long syndication of a Gundam show during a block targeted at the male 8-16 audience) I do seem to recall all of the UC Gundam that came to the states before Wing was aired on the Midnight Run. It does break down Gawker's argument, but it is true that Wing had the widest reach of all the Gundam shows aired in the US.
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