taks

i'm irrationally afraid of reading more of walsh's posts... wait, that's not irrational, ahem. taks

^sand: immaterial. curiously, have you ever actually watched the fox news reports? or do you simply cherry pick quotes/gaffes from your favorite liberal website? he claims he gives equal opportunity to both sides, not that he personally is "less biased." his show is based on opinion, period. that is, by definition, bias. he does give both sides equal ability to speak their views (and likewise has as many liberals as conservatives on his show), and he treats both equally bad, though the people he has obvious animosity towards are typically liberal (and likewise refuse to appear). he's clearly right of center, no doubt. overall, their news is a "more conservative bent" really only because every other news source is so far to the left, with a few exceptions. taks

hint: that means pointing to o'reilly over at fox, or matthews over at msnbc doesn't count as "bias." taks

interestingly, the only bias anyone can ever point to over at FN is from the analysts, who are, by definition, supposed to be biased. taks

i don't think it is as bad as you might be led to believe. like i said, radar was fairly "young" at the time and there are a lot of nuances that can cause issues that won't normally show up. in general, a strong return means big target, particularly if you're seeing a long range target. but there are ways to "fool" radar, ways i'm sure they were either just first uncovering or at least experimenting with, many of which can't be conveyed to a pilot with limited knowledge of everything involved (i know because that's what i design). counter-measures as well as counter-counter-measures are still a big topic of research, btw, so it's not like all there is to know is known. no problem, btw. radar is really cool, and i'm currently working on a variation of the pulse doppler concept that's even more cool than this one (IMHO, of course). taks

nope. trained, yes, but fully aware of all the nuances of pulse doppler radar, no way. given that this was in the late 50s, not only was radar relatively new (particularly this type), but counter-measures were as well. it was suggested at the bottom of the article that maybe there was some counter-measure being tested, and obviously if true, it worked well enough to fool the pilot (that would also explain why he never got a "response" regarding his inquiry...). taks

with this type of radar, it is impossible to tell how big the thing is (it's not a true SAR imager, just a positioner). he's basing his size estimate on the strength of the radar return, which could mean a lot of things. for one, it could mean the object was much closer than he originally thought, which would result in a larger return. it could also be the result of a false alarm, which would explain the erratic behavior. typically false alarms are due to noise and won't have coherence from one "image" to the next, so that is unlikely, but they can also result from simple electronic malfunctions or any of a number of interferences such as intentional jamming. hard to really say other than you can't tell from this type of return. taks * i put "image" in quotes because they are sort of images, but not pictures like something you could look at to determine size. what pulse doppler radars spit out are time-frequency matrices. one axis is time of arrival, which directly relates to distance, and the other is frequency, or doppler shift, which directly relates to speed.

my guess would be that he misread his radar returns, and/or there were some faulty images on his own screen. obviously there was something in the airspace otherwise he would not have been cued to respond to it, however his numbers clearly do not jive with real-world radar technology (it has nothing to do with current vs. past, btw, just physical limits of radar systems in general). in short, his radar wouldn't be able to detect that speed, even if it was possible for some extraterrestrial (or even terrestrial) craft to achieve it. taks

ahem, thus proving my point. unfortunately, i can't disagree about the skeletor characterization. i actually always thought "chester the molester" back when he was running against bush in the primaries oh so many years ago. i think "wolf in sheep's clothing" is a better characterization for the other one. taks

there's a problem with the pilot's numbers... since he was in an F86, i'm assuming his range radar was an AN/APG-30, which is an x-band, pulse doppler radar. x-band radars typically operate around 10 GHz (above 10.7 GHz is the Ku-band), so approximately 0.03 m wavelength. for a pulse doppler radar, there is a range/velocity equation that says V_max * R_max = c * lambda / 8, where c is the speed of light (m/s) and lambda is the wavelength (m). according to his numbers, V was as high as 7600 miles/hour, or 3398 m/s, and the closest range was 15 miles, or 24140 m. for c = 2.9979e8 and lambda = 0.029979, V_max * R_max = 8.99e6 m^2/s, but his numbers result in V * R = 8.20e7 m^2/s, nearly a factor of 10 difference. either his velocity estimate is off by (at least) a factor of 10, or his distance is. ranging is pretty accurate with these radars, so i'm guessing the former. in other words, the target was really probably only moving 760 miles/hour, which is just barely supersonic. in reality, 15 miles was not the maximum range of the radar (farther), so the maximum speed was likely even lower than 760 miles/hour. i did this pretty quickly so if anyone wants to check my numbers, please do... taks

ooops... hit "reply" to wrong thread... i will switch it. taks

sloganizer.net... ahem. taks PS: i know, not part of game design, but i clicked on the damned thing, yet again, as if it has a magnet on it. grr gfted1!!!

huge bias. heck, we have "journalists" from the nytimes now saying that "objective" reporting isn't an ethic that needs to be adhered to anymore because there's "too much at stake." this is exactly when we need even more objectivity to prevent bias from improperly skewing the issues. a sad time indeed. taks

went to the new warren miller film "children of winter" saturday evening. it's pretty cool. one of the skiers in the film, billy poole, a renowned extreme skier, died during filming in utah in january of this year. they had a really nice tribute to him during his bit near the end. taks

same reason bill clinton won against HW. nothing new. no ideological shift at all. mccain did manage 46% of the vote, in spite of media slant that was clearly against him. a buddy of mine and i have had this discussion a million times. he comes from galveston down in dixiecrat territory (his dad is a dixiecrat judge). republicans don't need to drop moderates, they need to drop the social harping, i.e., religious based arguments. stick to small government rather than spend like they did with a republican controlled house/senate/presidency and they'll do better. the younger republicans seem to know this. i think the ones that needed to get purged, got purged, quite frankly. taks

wow, such an ignorant statement. there is no such thing. this very concept means BIG inefficient bureaucracies, which is entirely against the concept of a small government. the US citizens rightly want a small government. and should the pelosi/reid/obama reign give us the opposite, GD is correct, the libertarian types will move into power. fine by me... taks

you mean god help the US, right? go back to australia twit. taks

you can get DVD-RW drives real cheap, like $25 US. taks

that would be odd, but i wouldn't mind, either, since i'm DVD only these days. my preferred CD player, one of those killer 72X true speed drives (kenwood i think?) bought the farm rather quickly and wouldn't play anything other than the highest quality CDs. it's still in my rig, just not hooked up. i rely solely on my DVD player in the interim (which is going on 4 years now, hehe). taks

a party of 4 i believe, but you build them all yourself. there are opportunities to pick up an NPC here or there as i recall. somewhere buried in this thread are details to that end... taks

keep in mind that the primaries tend to draw the most active partisans to vote, which tends to mean those either further on the left or further on the right than the general voting public. taks

once the needle is in me i'm fine... it's going in that causes me grief. i have been punctured a million times this year and the nurse always asks when i turn my head during insertion, but turn it back once the thing is in... "needles bother you, eh?" sewing needles aren't an issue, either, unless someone is trying to push one of 'em into me. oh, i hate stinging insects for the same reason, it's like an injection. taks

the world likes him because he more closely follows their leftist ideology than mccain, or bush, or any other conservative politician in the US. they wanted billary again, or kerry, or gore... see a pattern here? socialism is just another form of statism/collectivism and any "middle ground" between socialism and capitalism is still statism, no matter how the world wants to spin it or "compare" one guy's socialist ideas with another's. it's all still statist as long as the philosophy advocates spreading the wealth, rather than increasing overall wealth. btw, it seems too, that all these judgements about obama are being made based on what his campaign is claiming, not what he really thinks, which can be derived from his statements prior to the campaign... he's a socialist, he just has to work within a system that doesn't tolerate use of that word. taks

somehow comments regarding UFOs coming from a guy that flys a pot-leaf flag seem sort of... ahem. yeah. taks

uh, he's referring to a state constitution, and whether or not a federal law overrides it. the answer: it depends. states can overcome federal law by appealing (and winning, of course), or they can simply ignore the law, but that's risky. of course, many states ignore DEA laws w.r.t. marijuana, but that's not as politically risky as others can be. as far as i know, there typically isn't any "grandfathering in," either. since palin is still governer of AK, she might be able to appoint a replacement for stevens should he get the boot, which would mean another republican anyway. looks like a supermajority is out either way, and i'm guessing lieberman isn't caucasing with the democrats anymore, either. taks