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Comment Re:Iron dome has worked for it's first deployment (Score 1) 377

"Will it still work if the same rockets have an off balance twisted fin making them spiral?" No. It will not make them harder to track or make them much harder to hit. Iron Dome uses a fragmentation warhead like a SAM does so close counts.
"Will new tactics erase some of the advantages as fewer and larger salvos are launched?" Maybe but it takes time to set up a lot of rockets for a barrage and that is likely to be seen by drones. If that happens then you just blow up the rockets while they are being set up. Double bonus.
"Will EW rockets get thrown in with the others to try to jam iron dome radar tracking?" Really expensive and not likely to work. Radars have ways to dealing with all but the most advanced jammers.
"How well will it work against larger salvos with a bunch of really cheap cardboard and tinfoil rockets mixed in?"
See the problems with large barrages.

Comment Re:That's all well and good (Score 1) 102

That is why I said "biodegradable". Even normal biodegradation often includes weathering the effect of water, sunlight, and the air on the material. In other words it returns to a form that is benifital or at least neutral to the environment. Simply using environmentally friendly paint or coatings would be about all you would need to do for a really clean. Of course the funny thing is that people often call rusting rot or rotting.

Comment Re:Why? (Score 1) 530

This is at best years away. Also why have JIT recompilation? Apple has huge amounts of server power so they could do a translation of the any appstore app for a developer with no more than a flick of a switch. Here is how it could work.
1 Apple writes or buys an X86 to Arm 64 translator and tests it with some of their own apps and the most popular apps in the Mac Store.
2. Apple announces the ARM line of Macs along side of the Mac Pro line.
3. Developers can buy seed machines 6 months before customers.
4. Developers can recompile or translate and test their apps.
5. Consumer launch and a large supply of apps in the store.
The one thing I worry about is if Apple will make OS/X App store only. If so then it would be terrible but frankly end users will probably eat it up.

Comment Re:don't (Score 4, Informative) 239

Pretty much. The local government controls access to right of way so you will want them on board. The local chamber is next on your hit parade. You need them to back you because it will help them make more money and bring in more businesses. Next the Economic Development board needs to back you and possibly get you tax breaks and grants.
Do you have a local cable company? If so they will fight you tooth and nail. If not you should at least look at doing TVIP as well as Internet. If you are going to build out then you should make the most of it.
In other words it is a lot of politics these days.

Comment Re:Why? (Score 2) 530

Apple would be dumb to not have OS/X running on ARM. Just as Microsoft now as Windows running on ARM. The X86 did beat everyone by being the fastest cpu you could buy. It was the good enough CPU. As the X86 got better and better it came up replacing first minicomputers and then even pushing into the mainframe and super computer space. ARM is also moving up the same way and it too will someday may be good enough. Today it really is good enough for most of what people are buying Celerons, Pentiums, and i3s for. Just how many people are using X86 to surf the web, run quicken, and maybe Office? An ARM cpu could do all of that today.
AMD says it will produce ARM Opterons. I would love to see that so I could go to Newegg and buy an ARM cpu and put it into an off the shelf motherboard for say a NAS or even a desktop PC running Linux.

Comment Re:How many more? (Score 5, Insightful) 409

The optimism for Windows Phone in the press really does surprise me. Windows Phone 7 was really feature incomplete at launch but people made the excuse that it was their first Version. Ahhh No it was not, Microsoft had been making mobile OSs for a long time and Windows Phone 7 was Major version 7 and used the same kernel as Windows Mobile.
Microsoft has chopped Nokia off at the knees when it announced Windows Phone 8. Not only will it not run on the Nokia Lumia 900 it would not run on any existing Windows Mobile device. At that moment Microsoft was telling everyone to not buy a Windows Phone but wait for the next version and new hardware. Sales probably dropped to as close to zero.
Microsoft and Nokia need to understand that Windows Phone can not be almost as good as IOS and Android, it can not be as good as IOS and Android, it can be a little better than IOS and Android. It has to be much better than IOS and Android. Any new mobile OS that launches will have few apps than IOS and Android so you must be a much better platform than IOS and Android. RIM might get by with good enough because they have a large customer base that trusts them. Microsoft could have gotten by four years ago with Windows Phone 7 when IOS was limited to a few carriers and Android was just getting going. MeeGo could have leveraged the Nokia user base. Palm could have made it because it was at the right place and the right time but had a crippled SDK and not great hardware.
Also Nokia gave up the potential profit center of running the app store and selling media to the devices.
Nokia smelled smoke and jump off the platform and into a cold heartless sea and had to hope for Microsoft to save them. They should have put out the fire.

Comment Re:Makes sense (Score 3) 104

Nokia bought Navteq which was making navigation software long before there was an iPhone or Android so they are actually well entrenched in the system. That being said I fear that Nokia is looking for some way to survive. Windows Phone 7 was a disaster and I can see no reason for the optimism the media has shown for Windows 8. Windows 7 was supposed to be the big change now we are told that it will be WIndows 8 yet they have not let the press use it and the SDK has not been released. Then you have the abuse Nokia has suffered from Microsoft in their relationship. Nokia was supposed to be the flagship partner and now Microsoft is saying that the HTC device is "the Windows 8 Phone"! With the upcoming release of Windows 8 which is supposed to fix everything. Microsoft has killed the market for Windows phones. Nobody should buy any Windows phone on the market because they are all obsolete and the Windows 8 phones are not on the market yet. So Nokia's cash flow from phone sales is reduced to close to 0. What a deal.

Comment Re:Behold, our huge, mighty penises!! (Score 1) 718

Wow that has got to be one of the STUPIDEST things I have ever heard in my life. "As for the subs, SSBNs [wikipedia.org] are even more obsolete than carriers. There has been no justification of them since the introduction of SLCMs [wikipedia.org] decades ago."
How do you figure that? SLCMs have a fraction of the range and speed of an SLBM. A Trident SLBM can put 14 warheads on 14 targets 7000 miles away in around 30 minutes. SLCMs take roughly 3+ Hours to put a warhead on a target 1500 miles away. To target a large nation you have to put a sub with SLCMs off their coast and face their ASW forces in their home waters. Add in transit time for the subs or depending on forward basing and they are a much less effective a detirant than SLCMs. And yes I know that under the latest treaties the D5 only carries 4 or 5 warheads.
SLCM where handy when they were not counted as strategic weapons and as a way to make attack subs a threat to complicate ASW. Now that total warheads are counted SLBMs which are faster, longer ranged, and harder to intercept have an even larger advantage over SLCMs.
In other words.... YOU HAVE NO FREAKING IDEA OF WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT.

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