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JediMaster

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Posts posted by JediMaster


  1. anyone get dark forces and if so anyone can get the graphics unpixeled. i tried playing with configurator and still nothing. its like playing from the 80's.

    No, that's the engine. It's from 1995, they still used sprites then. Not until Quake the following year did they switch to polys.

    Now someone could take a game like Quake or Unreal and do a DF TC for it, recreating all the maps and such, but no one has to my knowledge.


  2. I replayed the original about a year ago. Graphics are VERY rough by modern standards, sprites and all at low res, it's basically Doom with Star Wars sounds and enemies. But, I did largely look past it to play the whole game and enjoy it.


  3. Wrong figures. Flyaway cost of the final F-22 built was $140m, it was in the public defense budget that year, and if they'd kept building them they likely would've kept a similar price range.

    Unless of course they are using costs of R&D, EMD, lifecycle etc, and then dividing by units produced, which is no longer flyaway cost. The F-35 is still in LRIP, so full production flyaway costs aren't yet finalized. Some of those planes ended production literally decades ago, the F-15A and F-16A prices are irrelevant. When the F-15C ended production in 1987 or so there was no way we were paying $126m each when B-1Bs were around that price!

    NO fighters cost over $200m flyaway right now, not one.

     

    I despise "creative accounting" for political purposes, and that site is just perpetuating bad numbers.


  4. While China's stealth abilities are unknown and unproven, the rest of their stuff is basically 4th gen with the notable exception of the engines. They've struggled for decades to get a modern jet engine in production.

     

    India has had issues as well, their engines producing less thrust than they wanted (and needed) so they need to import them for high-power needs.

     

    Brazil, Russia, and the rest of the West has been designing and building them far longer and that shows. Granted Russian engines have had reliability and maintainability issues, but when they're working they work great.


  5. Makes you wonder what gov't screw-ups have prevented it from being exported already. Every previous Dassault jet has been sold to numerous countries. The Rafale has "won" a couple of times but has yet to actually be bought.

     

    Meanwhile, SAAB has Gripens all over after the utter failure to export Viggens.


  6. My understanding is "coordination" would be "We're going to attack target A and time B, what time are you attacking target C at?"

    Deconfliction is more "I see Iranian jets over target A, let's go to our secondary target B instead so we're not too close."

     

    In other words, we're staying out of each other's way because the enemy of my enemy doesn't have to be my friend if I don't want it to be...and neither side wants to be.


  7. They're burning off the excess propellant. The time between fueling and launch is usually long enough for quite a bit of the propellant to boil off. Instead of leaving it in the tanks where the pressure and volatility could get too dangerous, the excess is bled off and burned a safe distance away.

     

    The DIV itself jets a lot of excess propellant on ignition which burns off all around the vehicle. They've mitigated it somewhat in recent years, but even here as you can see at the :25 mark in the first video there's a lot as flames go most of the way up. The DIV inaugural flight it almost looked like it was going to burn up on the pad it was so bright.

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  8. The EU post-ROTJ has been thrown away as far as we know. Books and other things taking place prior to ROTJ should still count--unless any of the standalone films coming between Eps 7-9 take place then. Not to mention the new Rebels cartoon which I believe takes place 15 years after Ep III and 5 yrs before Ep IV according to the show.


  9. The problem with the "why fix it if it isn't broken?" refrain is that it IS broken, most people just haven't seen it yet. It's like the bridge that doesn't collapse until that heavy snowfall finally overloads the crumbling support. The bridge wasn't fine the day before and broken the day after, it was already broken but the rot was under the surface and no one noticed till it collapsed.

     

    The point of regulating it as a utility is because like most utilities there is little to no competition and expensive infrastructure. You don't have three sets of power lines and you're not going to have three cable companies' fiber. If I don't like Time Warner, I can't go to Comcast or Cox or whoever. My choices are slow laggy satellite or AT&Ts Uverse which is like cable on its worst day EVERY day. Your alternative to your local Chili's bad baby back ribs isn't to go get a McRib at McDonald's, that's not a comparable alternative.

     

    AT&T is bluffing. They build out more infrastructure so they can make more money. Has ANY company ever said "to make more money is going to take too much effort, we won't bother"? Will this cut into their profits? Certainly. But just like corporate taxes do not restrict hiring if the company needs more personnel to expand (because the company can't choose NOT to expand, Wall Street won't allow that), AT&T won't sit back and do nothing if Verizon decides it WILL do it and gain market share. All would need to collude together and agree to stop, in effect boycotting their customers in an attempt to force the gov'ts hand, and I can't see that happening.

     

    These ISP's profit expectations are built on the idea that they sell more capacity to their customers than they can provide. If everyone used the bandwidth they paid for continuously and simultaneously the network would collapse. To continually throttle and increase the rates of those who are using what they're paying for is a bit like throwing out the customer at the all-you-can-eat buffet for eating three people's worth of meals. If you can't afford that, why are you having an all-you-can-eat buffet?

    The plans that have caps on them with speeds so high that you can hit your cap in one DAY are ridiculous.

     

    The solution that no one will go for is pay-as-you-go internet. If you don't use any, you pay nothing. If you use 100mb, you pay for that, if you use 100GB you pay for that. No limits on bandwidth or data caps, pure usage. Of course, that means the vast majority will never pay that much because they really don't use that much and profits would tumble even as the network would have lower utilization. Yet that less than 1% of their customers who use tons of bandwidth WOULD cut back so their bill stayed manageable while everyone else would pay very little.

     

    That's why people are sold a speed. The "some are using too much" argument is just a way to further increase their profits as they're not in any danger of losing money.

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