Comment Re:Why don't U.S. carriers also use ski-jump? (Score 5, Insightful) 449
Magnetic launch puts less stress on aircraft, requires a smaller physical space on the ship, and requires less manpower to operate and maintain.
Comment Re:Aircraft carriers (Score 1) 449
Carriers provide force projection, e.g. intimidation of smaller militaries by sending a capital ship and battle group in their direction.
Comment Re:This is actually the 2'nd trial (Score 1) 449
It is possible that this is a fully launched and commissioned aircraft carrier.
It doesn't seem to be carrying an air wing.
Comment Re:Solution to US debt problem (Score 2) 449
why on earth did they name the newest, most advanced aircraft carriers on the planet after a President who was never elected by anyone (he was appointed, first as VP and then inherited the Pres position when Nixon quit), and who was a complete failure? Maybe it's supposed to be an acknowledgement that our powerful government isn't a democracy at all, but really a plutocracy where a small cabal controls who gets appointed into powerful positions through rigged elections, much like in Saddam's Iraq.
Gerald Ford served on aircraft carriers during WW2. The Navy names its big ships after prominent Naval vets.
Comment Re:Solution to US debt problem (Score 4, Informative) 449
Reagan-class aircraft carriers.
Such a thing does not exist. The new class of carrier is Ford class. The USS Ronald Reagan is Nimitz class.
Comment Re:Why don't U.S. carriers also use ski-jump? (Score 4, Interesting) 449
almost hitting water if you don't have enough speed. Ski-jump gives you much more vertical speed on take off.
With flat launch, you do hit the water in high seas if they don't time the catapult launch correctly.
Comment Re:Why don't U.S. carriers also use ski-jump? (Score 4, Informative) 449
The US uses steam catapults, which are even better but are more expensive and are fairly involved to design.
Ford class carriers (2 currently under construction) will use magnetic launch rather than steam launch.
Comment Re:Fair and balanced? (Score 1) 292
Overhead wires are vulnerable to ice and snow. Underground wires are vulnerable to a hick with a backhoe. Putting wires in the ground isn't an obvious win.
Comment Re:Anybody else see Loudspeaker and think intercom (Score 1) 135
Modern apartment and condo buildings often have a PA system with speakers in each unit, usually as part of the fire alarm system.
Comment Free reskin of MobileMe (Score 1) 189
Looking at the OS X preferences panel for iCloud, it just looks like a rehash of MobileMe (which was just a rehash of
Comment Re:Netflix needs to make one more change (Score 1) 253
The content providers *are* willing to provide streaming content, the disagreement is over price. If you asked Netflix customers to contact the providers directly, the providers will just reply that Netflix is unwilling to pay a fair price for their product. The issue is that there seems to be no way to determine "fair price" of media content.
Comment Elections run by Diebold (Score 1) 417
Your vote (8) has been registered.
Hey, I didn't vote for 8! I voted for "No, I do not".
Submission + - On Losing a Pioneer - R.I.P Tim Perdue (wordpress.com)
anim8 writes: While reading the latest SourceForge email update I learned that Tim Perdue passed away on September 20, 2011. Tim was one of the original developers of SourceForge and forked it into Gforge. Before that Tim created PHPBuilder.com — in the late '90s it was the place to be for PHP. I enjoyed contributing to PHPBuilder and corresponding with him during that time. He was a good guy. My heart goes out to his family.
Comment Re:Hold up, wait a minute (Score 5, Insightful) 585
Your sample size is 1 site that gets only 50k hits per day, and you think you're the one with better numbers?
Comment Re:"bendy winged"? (Score 2) 366
Here's the video of the 787 destructive wing break test: video. Nowhere close to touching. Looks like they broke at about 20 degrees above the horizontal.
