As far as the US went, it wasn't even about the cost. Its about being able to rely on the US. The Indians have bought from the Europeans (British, French, German#), but it's been more about the cost there. Plus the Europeans don't always have the good/best stuff for sale, or could be influenced by the US. And while a *lot* of cash has been thrown at indigenization, some stuff can't be developed easily without collaboration. And it's getting to be not cost effective for *any country* without an export (large) market. India has not tended to be aggressive military exporters, primarily for political/ideological reasons also for lack of having the right products (cost/performance).

* The US refused to sell to or supply the Indians, while actively supplying the Pakistanis. [They did this mostly for political reasons (pakistan was a founding Centcom member and willing to do what the US asked, while India had its own opinions and a democracy which meant they didn't roll over when the US asked ]. Hell in the 1971 war, the US denied ammunition supply to the Indians and sent a carrier group over.

# Naval - Scorpene subs, used aircraft carriers (Vikrant, Viraat), Mirage, Jaguar, Sea Harrier airplanes, helicopters (sea King, westmoreland etc) Am Indian

Most of the focus today is on BVR (Beyond Visual Range) warfare. Radars and missiles help so that planes can engage and never get to a "merge" or force within Visual range (WVR) engagement. Of course, these arguments are not new. The claim was made as long ago as the korean war and vietnam war. Range issues, limitations on number of missiles carriable to number of targets, on situational awareness, mission objectives (eg penetrate and strike at land target as opposed to intercept & keep away), and countermeasures including ecm and airborne maneouvres, mean that WVR still has a role, to the point that the Israelis still design guns on their aircraft. Maneouvrability is most important for WVR combat, but maneouvrability and energy (speed) has a role to play in BVR/surviving that BVR engagement also). Stealth also has a role allowing an attacker to reduce the range or a defender to keep just outside an opponents hit zone.

Northrop / Lockheed make the EO-DAS which is claimed to increase the range, situational awareness and augment the network centric warfare to focus on BVR engagements. http://jalopnik.com/5264575/f+35-joint-strike-fighter-electro+optical-distributed-aperture-system-explained Use your judgment on the amount of salt to be taken with. Thrust Vector Control (TVC) is present on both the Sukhoi Su30-MKI and on the later lockheed planes.

Reference : Able-Baker - especially the Baker test. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads

If memory serves, it was found that large ships stood up surprisingly well to a nuclear explosion (especially an atmospheric blast). Of course, in the immediate vicinity the ship is thrown thousands of feet into the air in many pieces, further away, the overpressure/shock blast and the wave still damage and sink them, (and would do worse to crews). as you move further away fires and radioactivity emerge as dangerous threats. Underwater blasts are much worse to a ship than atmospheric blasts, the orientation of the ship with regard to the explosion matters and so on.

At a certain distance, a surviving ship could be recrewed or surviving crew operate it for a while, and washdown procedures would help minimize radioactivity (I think this is the reference to your quote) . Please note though that : a) You need a source of non-radioactive water for the washdown. After the baker test, washdown was conducted with water from the surrounding seas, which added so much radioactivity to the ships, that they were no longer safe to retain or maintain and had to be towed away and sunk. I *think* this is what happened to the Nagumo which was once the flagship of the Japanese fleet. b) Radioactivity is cumulatively harmful, so even a ship which is operational in the short term may be unusable, dangerous or lethally contaminated in longer term.

Other points : 1. Large nuclear weapons don't need "a direct hit" - I wonder if the concept is applicable

2.

Given that just one bomb from a hypersonic ballistic missile, a cruise missile, a sub launched or air launched missile can kill the ship, you shouldn't stake much on that bet. Of course, it all depends. 3.

That's the *trillion* dollar question, isn't it ? Remember a carrier's got to have a support fleet of other ships. However, a carrier can respond in kind in offense and project force (and airplanes) where no land strip exists and it would be difficult to fly around the world to get to. The US has so far decided in favor of the carrier. Other navies, somewhat less so. (and their decisions *are* informed by the cost). I beleive this is a reference to the washdown system used to limit the amount of radioactive agents that stick to the skin of the ship. This has very little to do Nuclear weapons can be so explosive that the concept of direct hit stands altered. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads

That's really uninformed and outdated scare mongering. The soyuz spacecraft did NOT nearly burn up, it entered in a ballistic trajectory (i.e.without lift). This is uncomfortable, and undesirable as it is a backup emagency mode, which causes brief periods of high G and causes the craft to land off-course but is still safe. The problem was investigated, fixes determined, and recent soyuz launches work fine. Cites : http://www.spaceflightnow.com/station/exp16/080422descent.html http://www.universetoday.com/2008/04/24/soyuz-hard-landing-the-facts/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/23/nasa_says_soyuz_all_fixed_now/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_TMA-13

the heat produced by a rabbit sitting on the Moon ....... the agreed upon standard was something in terms of libraries of congress .......... conversion factor
Libraries of Congress is a measure of amount of information. The more information is contained, the less the entropy.

Heat difference provides also is quantified by entropy. So obviously the heat produced by the rabbit can be converted into libraries of congress.
The applicable equation is the first one in http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Bekenstein-Hawking_entropy which relates entropy to the planck length (to bring it back on topic of TFA). The actual conversion factor is left as an exercise to the reader ....

Yes, of course informational entropy vs thermodynamic entropy as in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_entropy, but the one is a function of the other per black hole theory. (http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Bekenstein-Hawking_entropy)
This is also clearly the reason why we perceive intelligence as hot .... http://www.mediamarksurveys.com/playboy/

So .... how hot is the Library of Congress anyway ?

"the size of fish ...has declined due to industrial fishing practices wiping out the larger subspecies Hmm. Fish grow slowly over time. Industrial fishing kills off the huge ones, and ensures that smaller ones don't get to grow up enough to grow huge. Solution : Timemod instead of Genemod. Invent a time machine/time accelerator so that said fish spends 50 years (in far past or in 50:1 time ratio) to grow huge. For some reason, there are opponents to this as well ....

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/compatibility# - The detailed report shows pretty decent compatibility.

and i should have been clearer, gears doesn't yet appear to work even with nightly tester tools

Re : Google gears

From http://digital.venturebeat.com/2009/06/30/firefox-35-takes-you-back-to-a-time-before-browser-add-ons/

Update: Mozillaâ(TM)s add-ons director, Mike Nguyen, emailed [Ha] to say that Google had a version of Gears ready that was compatible with Firefox 3.5, but it was delayed due to some âoelast-minute bugs.â There should be a new version out next week, he said

and many add-ons seem to be fine or can be forced to work with dev builds or Nighly Tester Tools https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6543

I'm still waiting on google gears, myself.