About the ECM, the story is that the F35 only has effective ECM in the same frequency range that it's own radar uses -- effectively limiting it to C band. It has stealth features, but they are largely negated by the heat put out by that huge engine. These two weaknesses sum up the "can't hide" part of the F35's deficiencies.

Mind you, I've been out of the war toys business for many years. I only know what I've read. But it's not promising.

I am out of my element a bit here, but my understanding is that the F22 is an air superiority fighter only, whereas the F35 was supposed to be a multirole aircraft (air-to-air and air-to-ground) with (optional) VTOL features, (which no version of the F22 has) all in the same airframe. It was supposed to be the Windows 8 of fighter aircraft, a single airframe to take the place of a bunch of other craft.

...and apparently, it works about as well as you would expect of those types of solutions...

And, it was (giggle) supposed to (snerk) be (Bwaaaa haa haaa) affordable. Sorry, I can't say that with a straight face.

It's not bug-ridden, it's handy-capable.

Not sure it'll see many dogfights in any case. I'm told that the F35 is the largest, heaviest fighter with an airframe that produces the most drag, that the US has ever produced, and the huge engine that makes it fly puts out a very clear heat signature without providing much range, speed or maneuverability. It's been described as "can't run, can't fight, can't hide", and missions assume that older fighters go ahead and clean up the resistance so the F35 can complete its mission unchallenged. So, I'd imagine that if the F35 finds itself in a dogfight, something has gone very wrong with the mission.

> I heard elsewhere that the OS will detect (will this need a new API and drivers?) what input methods are available and adjust the UI accordingly. In which case the UI will be different on different devices for intents and purposes.

That's.... actually... a really good idea. Microsoft would actually be innovative, and for once, ahead of the pack. I'm trying to wrap my mind around that.

> I'm hopeful Nadella is talking more of a unified base with UI adjustments/differences as needed for each device type.

Now you're talking. On the one hand, it's an obvious strategy, so Microsoft will do something else instead -- like, a unified and mostly inappropriate UI over different code bases. Um, like, now.

On the other hand, Nadella is a new guy. He's not Ballmer. Maybe he'll surprise everyone in the freaking world and do the right thing.

> I think I understand why they want to do this: Only one code base, less overhead and more profit.

Not if nobody buys it.

> Both Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 are equally impossible to use effectively.

$$PROFIT$$!!!!!

Wait, what?

As a practical matter, Linux is the unified Unix. Or as unified as its a-gonna get.

> You might, but I, at least, wouldn't because what you'd end up with was a UI that worked equally badly on all types of screens and wasn't really right for any of them

Sorta like today, then.

A friend of mine was a microwave engineer for a company that made military communications and countermeasures gear. He could not convince his family that he did not work on ovens. I haven't checked with him in awhile -- maybe "microwave engineers" do work on ovens now.

What makes it work is the perception that whatever you're displacing whether it's IT or development is just a matter of following procedures, something anyone could do, so the smart company hires the cheapest people possible for the job. Go immediately to 4) $$PROFIT$$. Management, however, takes skill and insight and intuition and all those other things that are difficult to measure, so they can't possibly be replaced.

Well, yeah. The real excuse is that those locals get paid too much and are too difficult to intimidate, but that can't be made public.

How would we recognize alien porn? They could be very, almost unreasonably, similar to us and maybe it'd look like binary fission. More likely, it would look like six or more Teslas crashing at speed.

...happened many years ago. The government speced a power supply so clean that it couldn't economically be done at the time. The company that won the contract produced a box that met all the specs. Except that it failed after several hours of use. Opening the box, they found the power cable connected to a strain relief and the main power provided by a lead-acid battery.

Word is, there was no spec for lifecycle so the devices met the contract as stated, and the government couldn't return the devices.

So I'd recommend to Google: At some point, look in the box.