> AAEFS is a an agency of the DoD and thus is an agent of the government

So by your logic the government is interfering with the government?

They've banned themselves from selling it, not anyone else. They also (like Walmart) choose not to sell porn in -their- stores. People are still free to own, obtain, etc both porn and Medal of Honor.

And further, the GameStops on US military bases will have a contractual vendor relationship with AAFES, so I would not be surprising if the pressure/demand came from AAFES themselves.

And I believe NEX/MCX are also now under the AAFES umbrella overall, but maintain an independent brand identity, so I think the demand would encompass all bases.

Though I think this change probably means an increase in sales to military because of the controversy.

There is, to be fair, a difference between respecting IP (or not), and monitoring all your internal VPN data traffic.

There are good technical reasons why FDR data doesn't make sense to upload raw data automatically.

The pure FDR data is sampled at a high data rate, which varies according to model of FDR. The most modern systems also collect hundreds of data points at a time. This is discussed in the article, though I'd challenge some of their bandwidth calculations... the sample rates they quote seem very low (for modern systems), though I don't have my books in front of me.

What DOES make sense (and again, the article does address this), is having computing capability in the FDR (or outside of it, as it wouldn't need to be crash-worthy) that filters the data and ID's in real-time out-of-normal events and reports them.
In fact, most airlines already use a system like this, but not for the purpose of crash monitoring, but to detect aircraft problems in flight and alert ground crew so they can they can be prepared to fix them before the pilots even know there was a problem.

The issue is that this uplink capability can't replace the on-board FDR recording capability. That black box must still be there, as during the crash sequence, there is a good chance your satcom/etc systems will fail before the final crash. So this can augment, but not replace.

They also discuss adding a capability to comb through the complete raw data (you can just download it on landing as another route). Yep, great idea, but already being done by many airlines.
See http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aviationservices/brochures/Airplane_Health_Management.pdf

And in fact, the military is using the FDR data to check their pilot's proficiency as well as the aircraft performance:
See http://www.navair.navy.mil/PMA209/_Documents/MFOQA_101_20090224.ppt

Because takeoff requires the most amount of power, it's not feasible there, and during taxi it's not really an issue.

However, you aren't -completely- off base, because some helicopters do have "screens" designed to prevent dust/rocks/etc from damaging the engine during takeoff/landing. That's kind of like what I'm sure you are picturing.

http://www.chinook-helicopter.com/chinook/eaps1.html

But helicopter engines aren't really Turbofan engines, they are gas turbine engines that power a transmission, and so can afford the tradeoffs that come with an EAPS system.... and for a variety of reasons, helicopters don't have the same birdstrike issues airplanes have.

So that's why it's the crew chief's name that gets painted on the side, huh...

At the speeds of a jet fighter (and even at the speeds of a slow prop transport), an average goose will penetrate the leading edge of the wing, destroy the bleed air duct (also metal) underneath, tear up the wiring, and sometimes damage the next layer of structure.

Look at the first stage fan blades in an engine next time you're boarding an aircraft (they are ones in front you can see). Those are the biggest, toughest, blades in the engine. They basically are strong enough to pull the entire aircraft forward. When a big fat bird hits one, they bend and break.

Now, the newest/biggest commercial engines have a remarkable ability to absorb birds without a problem, but the more 'finicky' engines on fighter jets are much more susceptable, and of course if you've only got one engine... that's a big deal.

So my point in describing the impact power that a bird has is to illustrate that for a 'screen' to be strong enough to stop a bird would also completely block any airflow, and those engines are HUGE vacuum cleaners, and if that airflow slows too much, something called a 'compressor stall' happens, and that's generally bad and scares the crap out of the passengers (flames shoot out of the back end of the engine, etc)

Funny how prevalent this problem of people driving off on-ramps using to be a couple years ago... Oh wait, it really wasn't.

I find it interesting that now that people have 'help' navigating, they've suddenly lost the ability/interest to actually read road signs, much less maps.

We're now becoming lemmings to our SatNav. In a couple years, a simple virus directing all SatNavs to drive off cliffs will probably take care of any overpopulation problems for some time.

Don't get me wrong, I've caught myself being lulled into that false sense of security, but it sure is shocking how quickly we've stopped navigating since we've got a computer to do it for us.

Next thing you know, people will stop making fire by rubbing two sticks together and be dependent on 'matches' or some other new-fangled gidget

OK, you got me on semantics there.

"If you wanted to keep your UTC accurate, you'd have to ensure you kept updating your software configuration each time another was announced."

Better? Still requires manual intervention.

Maybe (I won't get tempted in an OS debate), but the average end user doesn't care/know whose fault it is. All they know is they got the disconnected message that they won't get if they buy/pirate the game, so in the end, OnLive loses because users won't sign up.

Yes, you could, but what about the next leap second that changes it to 13 seconds (or worse, 11).

If you wanted to keep your UTC accurate, you'd have to ensure you kept patching your software each time another was announced. Not the end of the universe by itself.

But then, you've also got to deal with the problem of overlapping time (1/1/2015 12:00:00.5 happening twice), which for most people isn't an issue, but if you've got an application for which microseconds are important (like the high-volume financial trading types mentioned elsewhere), then that could be an significant issue.

Also an early adopter, and I've found it varies widely by game. DiRT 2 was unplayable with that lag.

Some of the games worked fine, and IMHO the best thing it's got going for it is the ability to instantly play 30 minute demos of any game they've got, no need to install/uninstall more stuff on the home machine just to see if a game is worth it.

I also got kicked out several times due to "network issues" one night that was very frustrating (despite being on a reliably 16mbps connection->gigabit LAN). I think those factors, if not addressed, will prevent common user adoption (Win7 decides to background download some new service pack and hogs too much bandwidth and you're done with no understanding of why).

What, you never landed on the "you've had a baby, collect presents" block?

I suppose there wasn't a loop from selling the kids to having the kids go to "start".

Wow. So "your" failure to secure your network is killing people (given the scenario above), and you would still refuse to hand over the password to people trying to stop the attack and therefore save lives??

If your stance is that extreme even in the face of an example that extreme, then you may have just changed my mind on this legislation. Clearly we need it. I would have thought anyone out there, when faced with something beyond their capability, would ask for help if it was really important. Guess not.

I would also suspect you'd end up in jail for criminal negligence / negligent homicide / etc.

And also, IANAL, but I think the statement about essential services is not correct. I believe there are legal avenues for essential services to be forced to be provided. (remember the Air Traffic Controller strike, Reagan ordered them back to work, and they had to comply)

It's absolutely data mining, but it's far from worthless.

Every time you go to Amazon and it recommends something to you, guess what, that's data mining using basically the same techniques that this service will use. And as you might expect, that equates to big $$$ for them (or else they wouldn't be bothering).

Many many fields use the technology, particularly the medical fields for analyzing the relationships between a large number of input variables (which may or may not be correlated) and some desired output variable. Spam filters, Google Search itself... all data mining algorithms. Nah, no money to be made there...

Now, the reality isn't as simple as 'upload the data, training the model, and generate predictions' normally. It takes time to figure out what factors to include, ETL'ing the training data from the actual source(s), plugging in algorithm parameters, and carefully validating your output model. Most models I've worked have taken several iterations to get right as you learn more about your input data relationships as you use the model.

And your second sentence is sadly true, if management wants a certain output, then the endeavor is pointless. But when used appropriately (and it's on the experts to explain the limitations of the tech to the users), this stuff is really powerful.

But will a lot of businesses be willing to send their 10 year history of accepted/declined credit card transactions with all the related demographic data to the cloud? Or their medical scenarios with the medical details of each patient? I think not. The type of data most mining projects use is critically sensitive. So I predict this will be limited to experimental users 'playing around', nothing more.