That entirely depends on the use you have for the aircraft - high oil price or not, no aircraft has the CASM of the A380 (not even the proposed 777X), which puts it in a league of its own. Consequently, the 747-8 falls foul to the 777 so the sole VLA competitor to the A380 would be killed by its own sibling...

Oil can go through the roof, but if you can fill an A380 then thats the aircraft you need for the job. You can't shoehorn 600 into a 777 no matter how hard you try.

Fully aware of the KC-X contest, NG was the prime contractor but it was actually Airbus that did all the work.

The KC-X contest was only ran because Boeing got caught firstly trying to lease replacement tankers to the USAF at a rate which was several times more than they cost to buy, and then Boeing got caught in the first round buying the Airbus bid details from the US DOD procurement officer in charge of the bids.

Even with a US prime contractor and a US assembly line, there was massive uproar over the fact that Airbus had won the second round of bidding, before it got out back out to tender and Boeing magically found a way to make the 767 offering several billion dollars less than their previous bid...

There is no way the US political arena would accept a non-American plane as AF1. Which raises an interesting problem when the next replacement comes round...

The 747-8 has new engines, a new wing definition and loft, new winglets, new avionics and significant aerodynamic improvements across the board. The only thing left to do is switch construction to CFRP or another modern material, and its cheaper to do an all new aircraft for that as you have to redesign the framework completely for the new material loading. The -8 will be the last 747.

Plus, while iconic, the 747 carries a lot of unnecessary weight around due to its short upper deck (there is a lot of wasted dead space behind that hump in commercial aircraft, so much so that they considered putting a dozen sleeping berths up there), so compared to single deck aircraft or the A380 its not as well optimised weight wise for its structure.

There will be hundreds of 747s flying for the next three to four decades, so parts are not an issue - Boeing makes the majority of its money on aftermarket care and parts, they won't close those lines down fast.

Also, Airbus refused to submit a proposal for this when approached several years ago (while there was no bidding process, basic proposals were requested from both Airbus and Boeing) because they knew it was a no contest decision.

Not 1957 but 1958 which is close enough.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A....
It was in production in 57 with a live test shot in 1957.

They do but then they take a big expensive ship find the cable and bring it to the surface to fix it.
The real issue is not if it is possible because it is possible. The big question is if it is worth it?
Removing all the 02 mean no fires and reduced corrosion.
It also means more cost for fixing thing that go wrong.
The simplest way to do this would be to flood the bunker with Argon since it heavier than O2 and N2 it should displace the O2 but again the question would be why?

Or how about having the array swap in spares.
Every few weeks or so one of the spares could start to act as a mirror of an active drive and once that drive is mirrored you swap the active drive to the spare and the spare to the active?

The phased array will have to be even larger than the dish to get the same beam size.

Its about the same here - the technique they are talking about here is for the (typically) bank owned ATMs which are fixed in place, in a wall.

The technique for the independent cash machines is simply to break into the store, tie a chain around them, attach the chain to a 4x4 and drive off - it yanks the cash machine off the fixture and usually breaks it open as well.

I output Toast.

...pooh-pooh the entire idea, but then I realized a recent project of mine was putting various aspects of my salt aquarium's systems on my LAN using an RPi+.

So I'll just crawl back in my hole now.

At least I became aware of a new (to me) acronym. :)

I was saying that it makes a lot of sense for Facebook not to allow pictures of Mohammad in Turkey. Just like they don't allow boobies in the USA.

It doesn't "make sense", it simply retards social progress by keeping neurotics from considering the darker corners of their own thought processes. I mean, seriously. "Boobies bad"? That's just... pitiful. I am perfectly ready to describe anyone who isn't pleased by the sight of a nice pair of boobies in any neutral, humorous, peaceful, appreciative or loving context as a broken human being. One for whom I have sympathy and pity, but in no way does this engender any urge to force the world into a form that serves to insulate them from the toxic processes of their own twisted psyches.

As for drawing Mohammad, your assertion that there is no purpose but offense is wrong out of the gate. Art is one reason, political commentary is another, historical illustration is another, simple choice is another, and yes, offense is one but that doesn't make it an invalid use.

I suppose, but it is misleading- many people will read it as the "app" industry is more return or revenue than "[all of] Hollywood", not "one single aspect of Hollywood earnings among many." Of course, I expect such things from sensationalist reporting.

What offends you may not offend me. And vice-versa. What serves no purpose for you, may serve a purpose for me. Be it intended offense, or otherwise, or both at once.

No one in the USA has the "right to not be offended." Being offended is subjective. It has everything to do with you as an individual, or as part of a particular group; it varies due to your moral conditioning, your religious beliefs, your upbringing, your education; what offends one person or group (of any size) may not offend another, nor a person of another grouping; and in the final analysis, it requires one person to attempt to read the mind of other persons they do not know in order to anticipate whether a specific action will cause offense in the mind of another.

And no, codifying an action in law is not in any way sufficient... it is well established that not even lawyers can know the law well enough to anticipate what is legal, and what is not -- any more than you can guess what is offensive to me, or not.

Sane law relies on the basic idea that we try not to risk or cause harm to the bodies, finances and reputations of others without them consenting and being aware of the risks. It does not rely on the idea that we "must not cause offense."

Law that bans something based upon the idea that some individual or group simply finds the behavior objectionable is the very worst kind of law, utterly devoid of consideration or others, while absolutely permeated in self-indulgence.