I use virtualbox over vmware player for one main reason: nested VMs. one of the companies I worked for used nested vms (sigh) and vmware player would not work. kvm/qemu would, but its mgmt interface is 'difficult' to say the least.

btw, virtualbox is broken with 3.17 kernels and beyond. still no fix in sight that I've been able to find ;(

Hey, we don't want a stray nuclear explosion to send the moon off on a fantastical but low budget trip across the universe, requiring some really bad acting and 1970s styles to come back into fashion!

That would be horrific :(

Uh, no, that's not what he said at all.

If the "lock in" is worth it, why not?

I'm a Sky customer, I get my home phone package (unlimited calls, any time), internet (50Mbps fibre, no cap, no quota, no limit), and TV package (HD, movies, tonnes of entertainment channels, F1 etc) for roughly £75 a month - and my opinion is that its worth paying that for the service I get.

Skys video on demand service is brilliant, and I get access to it on my PC and mobile devices as well.

I've experienced Virgin Media (had it for a couple of years after I moved to this city) and Sky is simply better imho. When I wanted to move home, Virgin wanted a load of money to move the contract, and I had to sign up for a new contract at the new location. Sky however just said "yup, no issues, your phone and internet will be activated on this date, your TV will just work, no cost to move, and no new contract", which is great because Im only in the new place for 6 months until my property is built.

I'm currently on a business contract with EE for my mobile service, but I will be watching Skys offering with interest.

Look it up, the US lost that WTO case a few years ago when those loans were declared legal with a minor correction needed. It was the US that fell foul when the WTO declared the subsidies Boeing received from Washington State and other places to be illegal.

You are aware that there are still some 707 and 727s in service, right? :)

The reason they landed at Manchester was not because they burned more fuel, but it was because they thought that the fuel on the outer wing tank on the wing that had the shut down engine on was inaccessible - this turned out to be false, they could have made it all the way to LHR without issue.

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.

average user wont be able to, but many hobbiest users will.

once the code is done and an example circuit is created, its just copy and paste. hell, I'd do a sample just for grins. I find the whole idea WRONG to put limits in the code like this, so I'd be happy to write some sample code that will remap gps data on a serial line. but seriously, its not at all hard.

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.

gps modules almost always use low speed serial (ttl) comms.

it would be trivial (50 lines of C code, maybe much much less) to have a cpu (even attiny) in the middle between the gps module and the rest of the brain. when the x,y values come back and its inside a 'nfz' it could easily be remapped (in simple ascii) to NOT be in nfz. perhaps if you are near a nfz, it would go into auto-offset mode and add a fixed x,y value so that it thinks its miles away. then you compensate for it at the ground level when you program its course.

would not be hard at all.

waste of time to try to disallow x,y values for things like this. anyone here who spent a few weeks on even a simple arduino could do this remapping in an afternoon.

*secure* is my big issue, these days. without security being well thought out, iot stuff can be a disaster. and I'm not seeing a lot of thought (not really) being put into the whole iot stuff, which worries me a lot.

snmp is a red herring. it won't ever be used for iot and doesn't make sense there, other than to manage the systems that hold the sensors. (speaking as a seasoned snmp guy who spent 25+ yrs doing snmp for lots of big co's).