The fact that they don't even produce a 4th generation fighter of their own design (most of their fighters are copied/adapted from Russian designs) and suddenly they unveil this supposed 5th generation fighter supposedly without any foreign technology.
This statement would have held weight 15 years ago, but China's been modernizing their military quickly. They have recently designed (and put into service) the capable J-10 themselves, including a modern updated version (J-10B), as well as the JF-17 with Pakistan.
Technology stolen would probably include anti-radar coatings and perhaps engine and avionics.
The J20 is simply too big to be very stealthy.
Size has little to do with stealth. The B-2 is about seven times as big as the F-117, but still manages a radar cross-section of 0.1 square meters.
Not to mention that we don't actually know the J-20's dimensions or weight. It may not be any bigger than an F-22.
Anti-radar coatings is a reasonable guess, but China has access to much more modern engine and avionics technology via Russian fighter jets.
You mean like
I mean, granted, not all of these are new things - in fact most of them are all fairly old (the maglev being the exception), but I really doubt any of us would want to go without them.
You mean the maglev that was designed and built by Germans?
1. They are not talking about autonomous UAVs. These UAVs are essentially remote-controlled aircraft piloted by real pilots. I think some people assume these things think for themselves but that's not the case. Now that doesn't automatically discount concerns of safety, but "skynet" is not the case here.
Well they're not really remote-controlled aircraft; instead of responding to, say, pitch, roll, and throttle commands, you tell them where to go and what to do and they figure out how to get there themselves. This has worked out very well for the military, but the FAA hasn't trusted UAVs enough to allow them to prove themselves in large-scale civil usage. For example, the military wanted to use their UAVs to help out with Katrina efforts, but since it was in civil airspace, they weren't allowed to.
2. This is not specifically for military only. Many uses for UAVs exist outside of military applications such as basic transport. Of course they'll use them for surveillance, but they already do that with aircraft. UAVs can simply linger longer because one pilot can take over during flight. Similar to how large aircraft do it now with redundant crew members.
I think initially these are going to be used to supplement/replace things like news, traffic and police aircraft/helicopters. NASA's already been using some for years to help with monitoring California wildfires.
747-400 still has slightly longer range than 777. The longest flights are still on 747s - Newark NJ -> Singapore (nonstop).
Actually I believe all the 777 models currently in production (777-200ER, 777-200LR, 777-300ER) have longer range than the 747-400 (although the older models, the 777-200 and the 777-300, did not). Also, the last passenger 747-400s produced have a similar interior to the 777.
I believe Newark-Singapore nonstop is only flown by the A340-500.
777-200: 5235 nm
777-300: 6015 nm
747-400: 7259 nm
747-400ER: 7670 nm
777-200ER: 7700 nm
777-300ER: 7930 nm
777-200LR: 9450 nm (!!)
Now I'm completely lost. How would YOU not know what song YOU are playing? If there is song tag info, wouldn't your player display that for you? Why on Earth would anyone need to connect to some service for this info?
Well, Last.fm has to know the correct artist and song name for their algorithms to work best (so they can group all songs played by that artist together, for example). Sometimes people misspell a name ("Stained" instead of "Staind", or something), and it would be detrimental to Last.fm's data mining if it treated some Staind songs as being by "Stained" instead.
That being said, the prime function of Last.fm is not to correct mistagged songs, but doing so aids its algorithms and makes the website more useful, since it more accurately reflects its users' listening habits.
"Look! There! Evil!.. pure and simple, total evil from the Eighth Dimension!" -- Buckaroo Banzai
