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Comment JFK? (Score 2, Insightful) 105

I don't mean to be a whiny spoilsport, but with all the congestion in the airspace around NYC, why did they pick JFK to land a slow-moving and delicate aircraft?

There are numerous airports at the periphery that are significantly less busy, like Stewart International or Islip/McArthur that could have been used for this event. The need to avoid wake turbulence and make sufficient room in the pattern to accommodate such an aircraft had to be a pain to manage.

Regardless, excellent achievement in a cool aircraft.

Comment Use for AMBER alerts improper and dangerous. (Score 3, Insightful) 199

I was furious when they started using weather radios to announce AMBER alerts and I'm equally annoyed they are extending that to this system as well. These systems were designed for major public emergencies. Use for AMBER alerts and other emergencies impacting only small groups of people will only encourage people to ignore or deactivate their alert enabled devices. Here where I live, weather radios routinely go off for AMBER alerts. The average radio also goes off for a variety of minor weather issues, rather than only triggering for weather warnings. Many people simply unplug their radios after being woken up one too many times by a screaming alert radio letting them know there is a thunderstorm WATCH or AMBER alert. I imagine people will similarly disable all the available phone alerts, because the system will simply trigger far to often and annoy them. I know the very first thing I did when I read this article was find and disable the AMBER alert option. The settings were omitting from the article. You can find them in Settings >> Notifications, located at the bottom. There are two options, one to disable/enable AMBER alerts and another to disabled/enable "Emergency Alerts."

Comment Re:ATT is forcing users onto Uverse (Score 2) 347

I hope it decays soon in my neighborhood. Currently, AT&T only offers DSL at 1.5 down, despite the fact that I'm in a built up area. They routinely call or mail me begging me to come back, offering me up to X/Y speeds, then when I remind them they don't offer that here they get all confused. My only decent option is from my nemesis Comcast.

Comment Re:Peeved. (Score 1) 511

Simple. The game appeared worth some minor annoyances here and there. I certainly was not anticipating a complete inability to play for the entire release week. I was wrong. Provided Valve doesn't go off the deep end and require an always-on connection for HL2:ep3 or HL3 (which is about the only other game franchise I'd ever consider putting up with this crap just to play), this is the last time I'll make this mistake.

Comment Peeved. (Score 3, Informative) 511

I preordered a physical copy several weeks ago. I was never able to play the beta, because Amazon delayed my access code until it had ended. I have still not played the game, despite owning a physical copy. Tuesday, the game spent two hours completely downloading itself all over again, despite the physical copy. I was unable to join any servers in the US. It them refused to create a city once I was able to join a server in Europe. I gave up. Tried again Wednesday, still could not creat a city. Today, all servers were busy. Eventually got through, but was only allowed to play the tutorial, and about two minutes in the servers dropped out. Then back to unable to create city. Frankly, I knew this was coming. I hate EA for what they've gradually done to Maxis since the acquisition. I knew always-on DRM and shunting the region math onto the cloud was going to mean connection issues. What I didn't fully know is that my saves are on the server, and I cannot even create a game if the server is down. I love SimCity...I can remember many hours spend with SimCity (the original), SimCity 2000, SimCity 3000, and SimCity 4...and this looks like a welcome update. Shame I cannot play it.

Comment Not the US...US based lobbyists. (Score 1) 108

"Fears of the U.S. exerting undue influence..." Please don't conflate US based lobbyists exerting influence with the US itself exerting undue influence. Admittedly, we have been known to do that, but at least make the distinction when the offending party is a private party and not the United States itself/themselves.

Comment Unneeded worry in submitter's summary... (Score 1) 469

The submitter injected unneeded worry. According to Ford via USAToday: "The driver can overcome assistance and vibration at any time by turning the steering wheel, accelerating or braking" The article also uses the word "nudge" in reference to the control input, so I read all this to mean the system won't be fighting drivers. See: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2011/12/ford-says-fusion-sedan-will-get-lane-departure-system/1

Comment Re:Never used in combat? Good. (Score 1) 379

BS. There were two major conflicts during the Cold War that involved major air to air combat on a daily basis, Korea and Vietnam, and neither went nuclear. Your assumption is that no conflict with China or Russia could remain non-nuclear, but in both cases American air power was forced to fight Chinese and Russian planes and pilots in a proxy context. Further, your assumption is also that major powers have a death wish and couldn't carry out a conflict that was limited to a specific theater. Spurious assumptions.

Comment Never used in combat? Good. (Score 3) 379

Opponents of the F-22 keep screaming about how it has never been used in combat, despite three conflicts having occurred since they entered active service. Problem is, neither Iraq nor Libya had a functional air force that actually tried to fight AND posed a serious threat to our aircraft. The Taliban doesn't have an air force, and at the start of the war in Afganistan (prior to the F-22 achieving active status) Afganistan's air force was basically rusting hulks. This is an air superiority fighter. It isn't meant to bomb things. It is a predator, built to hunt and kill fighter aircraft, nothing more. That role justifies a lower overall number of aircraft, but the aircraft still needs to exist. In a conflict with a country with a formidable air force, such as China or Russia, or at least a functional one like North Korea or Iran, this aircraft would be invaluable. It could mean the difference between victory and defeat. I for one am glad it hasn't seen combat yet. That said, it looks like they need to fix the emergency O2 system. Might not be a bad idea to find a way to provide a graceful failure of the primary system, too, or automatically activate the backup. Either way...fix the damned thing.

Comment Glad to hear it! (Score 1) 165

Nothing against Indian call center workers, but I'm glad for this shift. My experiences with call centers in the Philippines have been dramatically better than my call centers in India. The accent, if present, is easier for an American to understand. I suspect that has to be with respective colonial relationships. The call center employees don't bullshit me by claiming to be Todd in Texas, they give me their real name and don't try to tell me they're local. They also don't get defensive when I'm pissed off. I suspect the companies there must be training their employees differently. Indian call centers seem far more aggressive...clearly run by MBAs. Plus, it is an economic break for a country that needs one.

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