Technically the term "order" would only apply to the military branches of the DoD, which are enforceable by military law.

For everyone else, his "orders" are just the same as the direction any CEO gives. Can't send you to jail for not complying, can fire you, but only after all the other executive branch guidance (HR Policy) is followed, to include union agreements as applicable.

Now if Congress gives direction, the Executive Branch agrees, and the Judicial Branch doesn't strike it down, then you can go to jail for not complying, but again, that's no different than any US citizen.

Mod parent up! Not sure who thinks the above is a troll, but this is a clear point to discuss.

The Libyan authorities appear to be making a stand that this website, which as it is registered as a ".ly" website, is clearly within their scope to control (both from a technical and common sense perspective), violates the legal and ethical guidelines which their country is guided by.

While Sharia Law may be based on Islamic beliefs, the Libyan government is not run by clerics. The term people should be looking for is "separation of church and state", not "remove religion from government". There are two separate things.

So should we remove laws against murder in the West because "thou shall not kill" is based in a Judeo-Christian religion (gasp).

Most ethical frameworks around the world have their foundations in a set of religious beliefs. Some would argue that religions are created because of a need for an ethic framework. And any community, to be effective, needs to agree on an ethical framework to be effective.

Also note that the Libyan authorities are not on a typical true "nut-job" rant of attempting to impose -their- beliefs on the rest of the world. They are controlling only what is theirs to control. Now if they hosted a root nameserver and poisoned it to send the rest of the world's "unapproved by Libya" links to a black hole, that'd be a different thing.

Agreed.

From the offending server's website: "BRL volunteered to host one of the original root servers ... to provide a root server for the MILNET in the event that MILNET had to be disconnected from the Internet."

The purpose of the G/H servers is not to support the greater good (that's a side benefit), but to ensure that the MILNET can function if the DoD cuts itself off from the rest of the internet.

And besides, If my math is correct, there are a total of 205 redundant root sites (http://www.root-servers.org/), so imagine going up asking for funding...
[IT Guy] "General, we need money to add another redundant root server site, if all the sites go down the internet collapses!"
[General] "That sounds bad! How many redundant sites are there now?"
[IT Guy] "Only 205"
[General]

> AAEFS is a an agency of the DoD and thus is an agent of the government

So by your logic the government is interfering with the government?

They've banned themselves from selling it, not anyone else. They also (like Walmart) choose not to sell porn in -their- stores. People are still free to own, obtain, etc both porn and Medal of Honor.

And further, the GameStops on US military bases will have a contractual vendor relationship with AAFES, so I would not be surprising if the pressure/demand came from AAFES themselves.

And I believe NEX/MCX are also now under the AAFES umbrella overall, but maintain an independent brand identity, so I think the demand would encompass all bases.

Though I think this change probably means an increase in sales to military because of the controversy.

There is, to be fair, a difference between respecting IP (or not), and monitoring all your internal VPN data traffic.

There are good technical reasons why FDR data doesn't make sense to upload raw data automatically.

The pure FDR data is sampled at a high data rate, which varies according to model of FDR. The most modern systems also collect hundreds of data points at a time. This is discussed in the article, though I'd challenge some of their bandwidth calculations... the sample rates they quote seem very low (for modern systems), though I don't have my books in front of me.

What DOES make sense (and again, the article does address this), is having computing capability in the FDR (or outside of it, as it wouldn't need to be crash-worthy) that filters the data and ID's in real-time out-of-normal events and reports them.
In fact, most airlines already use a system like this, but not for the purpose of crash monitoring, but to detect aircraft problems in flight and alert ground crew so they can they can be prepared to fix them before the pilots even know there was a problem.

The issue is that this uplink capability can't replace the on-board FDR recording capability. That black box must still be there, as during the crash sequence, there is a good chance your satcom/etc systems will fail before the final crash. So this can augment, but not replace.

They also discuss adding a capability to comb through the complete raw data (you can just download it on landing as another route). Yep, great idea, but already being done by many airlines.
See http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aviationservices/brochures/Airplane_Health_Management.pdf

And in fact, the military is using the FDR data to check their pilot's proficiency as well as the aircraft performance:
See http://www.navair.navy.mil/PMA209/_Documents/MFOQA_101_20090224.ppt

Because takeoff requires the most amount of power, it's not feasible there, and during taxi it's not really an issue.

However, you aren't -completely- off base, because some helicopters do have "screens" designed to prevent dust/rocks/etc from damaging the engine during takeoff/landing. That's kind of like what I'm sure you are picturing.

http://www.chinook-helicopter.com/chinook/eaps1.html

But helicopter engines aren't really Turbofan engines, they are gas turbine engines that power a transmission, and so can afford the tradeoffs that come with an EAPS system.... and for a variety of reasons, helicopters don't have the same birdstrike issues airplanes have.

So that's why it's the crew chief's name that gets painted on the side, huh...

At the speeds of a jet fighter (and even at the speeds of a slow prop transport), an average goose will penetrate the leading edge of the wing, destroy the bleed air duct (also metal) underneath, tear up the wiring, and sometimes damage the next layer of structure.

Look at the first stage fan blades in an engine next time you're boarding an aircraft (they are ones in front you can see). Those are the biggest, toughest, blades in the engine. They basically are strong enough to pull the entire aircraft forward. When a big fat bird hits one, they bend and break.

Now, the newest/biggest commercial engines have a remarkable ability to absorb birds without a problem, but the more 'finicky' engines on fighter jets are much more susceptable, and of course if you've only got one engine... that's a big deal.

So my point in describing the impact power that a bird has is to illustrate that for a 'screen' to be strong enough to stop a bird would also completely block any airflow, and those engines are HUGE vacuum cleaners, and if that airflow slows too much, something called a 'compressor stall' happens, and that's generally bad and scares the crap out of the passengers (flames shoot out of the back end of the engine, etc)

Funny how prevalent this problem of people driving off on-ramps using to be a couple years ago... Oh wait, it really wasn't.

I find it interesting that now that people have 'help' navigating, they've suddenly lost the ability/interest to actually read road signs, much less maps.

We're now becoming lemmings to our SatNav. In a couple years, a simple virus directing all SatNavs to drive off cliffs will probably take care of any overpopulation problems for some time.

Don't get me wrong, I've caught myself being lulled into that false sense of security, but it sure is shocking how quickly we've stopped navigating since we've got a computer to do it for us.

Next thing you know, people will stop making fire by rubbing two sticks together and be dependent on 'matches' or some other new-fangled gidget

OK, you got me on semantics there.

"If you wanted to keep your UTC accurate, you'd have to ensure you kept updating your software configuration each time another was announced."

Better? Still requires manual intervention.

Maybe (I won't get tempted in an OS debate), but the average end user doesn't care/know whose fault it is. All they know is they got the disconnected message that they won't get if they buy/pirate the game, so in the end, OnLive loses because users won't sign up.

Yes, you could, but what about the next leap second that changes it to 13 seconds (or worse, 11).

If you wanted to keep your UTC accurate, you'd have to ensure you kept patching your software each time another was announced. Not the end of the universe by itself.

But then, you've also got to deal with the problem of overlapping time (1/1/2015 12:00:00.5 happening twice), which for most people isn't an issue, but if you've got an application for which microseconds are important (like the high-volume financial trading types mentioned elsewhere), then that could be an significant issue.

Also an early adopter, and I've found it varies widely by game. DiRT 2 was unplayable with that lag.

Some of the games worked fine, and IMHO the best thing it's got going for it is the ability to instantly play 30 minute demos of any game they've got, no need to install/uninstall more stuff on the home machine just to see if a game is worth it.

I also got kicked out several times due to "network issues" one night that was very frustrating (despite being on a reliably 16mbps connection->gigabit LAN). I think those factors, if not addressed, will prevent common user adoption (Win7 decides to background download some new service pack and hogs too much bandwidth and you're done with no understanding of why).